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AN 



ORATION 



DELIVERED ON 



THE FOURTH DAY OF JULY, 1850, 



BEFORE THE 



CITIZENS OP COVINGTON, KY. 



BY 



W. E. ARTHUR, Esq. 



^^ COVINGTON: 
PRINTED BY DAVIS & BEDINGER. 
1850. 



Wm. E. Arthur, Esq. 

Dear Sir — At a public dinner at the Madison House on the 4th inst., it 
was unanimously resolved, that you should be requested to furnish for pub- 
lication, a copy of the beautiful, patriotic and eloquent address delivered by 
you in celebration of our National Birth Day. 

To carry out the wishes of the gentlemen present at the dinner, and to 
afford a substantial gratification to ourselves and fellow citizens, we hereby 
respectfully request you to furnish us for publication, a copy of your 
Oration. 

JAMES T. MOKEHEAD, 
M. M. BENTON, 
LEVI F. DAUGHEBTY, 
S. T. WALL, 

A. EVANS, 
PHIL. F. BBOWN, 

B. APPEBSON, Jr , 

.-. ; JAMES SOUTHGATE. 
Covington, July 6, 1850. . '" 



\ 

Covington,- Ky., July 9th, 1850. 
GENTLftMEN — Your favor of the Gth inst., is before me. I herewith 
transmit you a copy of the address which I had the honor to deHver on 
the 4th inst., last past. I am sensible that your determination to give it 
publication proceeds rather from considerations of kindness towards me, than 
from any merit in the address. 

With great respect, yours, &c., 

W. E. ABTHUB. 
Hon. J. T. MOBEHEAD, 
Dr. ASBUBY EVANS, Etc., Etc. 



tl 



D^.- 



25d 



ORATION. 



Ml' Countrymen : — I rejoice tliat we, and each of us, have been permitted 
to behold the return of this our National birth-day. It must be a source of 
speechless delight to every genuine friend of popular government and civil lib- 
erty, that the stated recurrence of this commemorative epoch always displays 
a crowd of new evidences, and still more pre-eminent demonstrations of the 
profound wisdom, and of the consummate utility of that great federative sys- 
tem by which we are so benignly governed. Each return of this thrilling 
anniversary proves yet more fully the peculiar and the commanding power 
of the Constitution to shape the destiny of this great people, and to 
firmly guide them through all the trying emergencies and changeful events 
inseparable from the uncertainties of life, and the instability of human affairs 
to the fullest happiness and to the broadest renown. Like a good spirit 
commissioned of high heaven, this ever memorable anniversary suddenlv 
appears from time to time in our midst, reviewing the past, reciting the pres- 
ent, and revealing the future. Steadily in majestic defiance of the general 
wreck of surrounding empires the rock upon which our Fathers happily builded 
extends its surface, increases its density, and exalts its summit. Onward! 
onward! excelsior! excelsior! is the lisp of childhood, the song of youth, the 
motto of maturity, and the last injunction of venerated age, wheresoever found 
in every department of the government, and in every grade of societv. 

It has, however, become somewhat fashionable with a class of men who cer- 
tainly possess many qualities which commend them to respect and veneration, to 
grieve and moralize over what they conceive to be conclusive evidences of the 
complete extinction of all those great and ennobling virtues and energies which 
were so conspicuously displayed throughout the revolutionary era. They 
find fault with the generation now assuming the management of affairs, be- 
cause, forsooth, as industry, wealth, refinement, and the arts and sciences, 
develope new sources of enjoyment, and greater facilities of improvement, 
old, repugnant, unsuited and cumbersome habits and customs are held valua- 
ble and interesting solely on account of their beloved associations, and of 
their ever-venerated antiquity. That I confess it is a fashion which I cannot 
follow, a distinction which I cannot regret, a sorrow with which I cannot 
sympathise. I cannot for one instant, suffer myself to concur with a form of 
belief which claims that statesmanship, or patriotism, or fortitude, or any good 
thing — or any high pursuit is less cultivated and less esteemed now than at 
any former time whatever. I wish, however, to make no issue with persons 
who are endowed with the melancholy, dismal, and distressing gift of detect- 
ing even in scenes of the sunniest promise, the most chilling horrors, 



( 4 ) 

and the most appalling portents. Little, in my humble estimation, is that 
lone and isolated individual to be envied, whose hapless solicitude for the 
public good, prompts him, unbidden, to hold up what is, in a misjudged and 
invidious contrast, with what ivas. Charles Lamb has quaintly said that a 
" poor relation is the most irrelevant thing in nature!" I wonder what degree 
of appositencss that sparkling genius would ascribe to a croaker who is con- 
stantly wasting the present, and muttering over evils in nubibits. That class 
of men who are perpetually descanting upon dangers and difl&culties wrung 
out of forced comparisons, are very pernicious members of community, if we 
give credence to the ancient dame Meg Merrilles, who declared the "evil 
thinkers are the evil-doers." I remember it has either been spoken or 
written that there may be some things which it were better not to know! — a 
proverb, I surmise, of somewhat questionable philosophy; but one which it 
seems to me should not be entirely lost sight of when we are treating of the 
mere figments of a too heated fancy, or the peevish cynicism of declining 
influence. 

Do but compare for one instant the Republic, as she was at the close of 
the eighteenth century, with the unrivalled intelligence, prosperity, and vigor, 
which distinguish her in the middle of the nineteenth, and such injurious 
reflections upon modern progress fall to the ground, and vanish "like the 
baseless fabric of a vision." Amid the fluctuating circumstances and pur- 
suits of men, measures and manners must change; but principles, which are 
essentially uniform and indestructible, stand unshaken throughout the fiercest 
tempests of vicissitude. There are perceptible differences between the pres- 
ent and the past — the contrary would be deplorable, — but I respectfully aflarm 
that in every thing which should be permanent and enduring, the present 
generation doubly proves its heroic jjaternity. 

It would be difficult — nay, impossible — I imagine, if the millions of sound 
Constitutional Freemen who swarm over this confederation of states, could 
be searched one by one to discover a single individual who does not regard 
with the deepest veneration and esteem the learning, the eloquence, the valor, 
the magnanimity, the hardy self-denial and unsearchable love of country so 
signally evinced by those illustrious men, who, with strong arms and unquail- 
ing spirits, led a bleeding people out of the direst bondage over all the infan- 
try and cannon, fortifications and ramparts, pomp and power, cunning and 
treachery, wherewith tyranny had fondly hoped to overwhelm them — unto the 
noonday fullness of liberty and the meridian glory of Republican sovereignty. 
Their achievements are no more the favorites of immortality, than they are 
the fountain sources of an enlightened beneficence, and the true and genuine 
title-deeds to the gratitude of mankind. But it appears to me that the fact 
of their having been eminently good and great, furnishes no grourtd in support 
of an argument which assumes that nothing that is good and great can come 
after them, if their manners and habits be not strictly and slavishly adhered to! 
The American of to-day, may not have as much of the " dust and blood of 
the revolution upon hira as the American of the times which tried men's 
souls," — but he has the same blood in his veins, the same fire in his heart. 



( 5 ) 

and tbe same glorious cause to uphold ! The spirit which animated the 
Heroes of the revolution, is not, cannot be extinguished ! The face of the 
Union teems with flesh of their flesh, and with bone of their bone ! The virtue 
by which they were distinguished will flow on in a compact essence through 
each succeeding generation, — and like the classic waters of Arethusa, remain 
undiluted, specific, and stainless, in the midst of the most turbid currents ! 
Is it reasonable to suppose that the posterity of such a race of men as erected 
this great Union of States, will ever basely degenerate in view of the high 
position in the world to which they have succeeded — that they will ever 
become utterly insensible to their own highest happiness, or deaf to the min- 
gled voices of duty and fame ? Is it reasonable to suppose that they will 
ever cease to form themselves, with burning emulation, after the illustrious 
models of the past — or generously strive to cultivate a green spot, an oasis 
in the memory of future times, in honorable contrast with that of their envi- 
able predecessors? Is it reasonable to suppose that they will ever madly 
eschew honor, usefulness, authority and renown, to swelter in ignomi- 
nious sloth — effeminate in luxury, and fritter and waste away in frivolous and 
vitiating pursuits ? I am persuaded that such idle suppositions, if indulged 
in, would fail to excite any other feeling in the breast of my countrymen, 
than that of pity and contempt — pity for the absurdity of the imputation, 
and contempt for the impotency of its malice. 

It is an encouraging reflection that patriotism — that any merit whatsoever, 
is not susceptible of monopoly, — and that virtue is not the exclusive prop- 
erty of any age or generation. These qualities, it is manifest, are attainable 
by all persons, and at all times. How much soever the circumstances by 
which individuals are surrounded may embarrass or discolor their purposes, 
and conflict with their latent principles and predilections, it is not hence to 
be concluded that they have undergone a mental or physical change, — that they 
have heartily imbibed the hue and spirit of the time, — that they have become 
enfeebled or perverted by prevailing usages, or by involuntary acquiescence 
in a state of things which may be wholly inimical to their peculiar views, and 
to their inborn and cherished sentiments ! That which, in a more favorable 
field, and a more rarified atmosphere, would kindle into the purest virtue, 
and bloom into the most diffusive usefulness, is not necessarily conveited by 
inactivity or obstruction, if any there be, into henbane and deadly night- 
shade. On the contrary, nothing is more true, nothing is more fully borne 
out, or better established — with a few meager exceptions — by the records of 
the past, than the utter fallacy, the total failure of all attempts, of all influ- 
ences whatever to eradicate entirely, or to suppress permanently the freedom 
of the mind — the energy of the will — the integrity to deserve, and the capa- 
bility to achieve. A collected mind and a constant heart, "what nothing 
earthly gives or can destroy," — the leaven and contemporary alike of every 
age and generation ; though exposed to checks, uncertainties, and the languor 
of repose, are still as impenetrable as adamant to the vices which enfeeble ; 
poised upon their own unshaken center, immutable as that Heaven of which 
they are emblematic, they require but a suitable theater and a competent 



(C ) 

test, to display a greatness of purpose and a vigor of deed not unworthy the 
most favored times, and not inferior to the most splendid achievements. 
They may for a time drift obliquely, as in a dead calm, or be driven like a 
vessel by contrary and tempestuous winds oif their original course, — they 
may, unable to repel the violence of the storm, submit to be diverted into 
forbidden seas, amid breakers and shoals : but, true as the needle to the pole, 
when the storm has spent its fury, and the dark clouds and thick mist which 
obscured the way, have been driven in whirling eddies from the face of a 
brightening sky, they will gradually, but surely, return, as the breeze quickens 
and swells their flapping canvass, to their true line of progression — to the 
channel whereunto they were aj)pointed and fitted, and thence forward 
advance, steadily, upon their onward mission, to the final ending of their 
voyage. 

It would, indeed, be unspeakably grievous, if it were true, that any time, 
or any age, or any generation, had been so constituted, and so appointed, as 
to be exclusively the exemplar of what is excellent in the human under- 
standing, elevated in the human heart, and glorious in human enterprise. 
What an irresistible momentum such a faith would give to all downward 
tendency ! What a paralyzing incubus upon the better and higher purposes 
and aspirations of the soul bending under adverse circumstances, and strug- 
gling with what should be regarded ephemeral hindrances — feeble, not uncon- 
querable tests of the mighty energies of an uniform and concentrated will ! 
It would lead men to give way to an inevitable fatality; and the terror of 
consternation and the stupefaction of despair would make the world one 
universal madhouse, and the wise and beautiful, loathing and loathed. Pitch 
such idle gossip to the winds ! It was never so plain that Virtue has no 
partial favors or exclusions. She is open to all; she invites all; — the past 
less than the present — the present before the future. It is equally plain, 
that the tendency of our people is upward. The proud, spontaneous pro- 
gress of man and government towards perfectibility — increasing with the 
flight of instants — is no less an immutable law of Nature, and of the 
economy of the God of Nature, than that water, whether upon moun- 
tain's top or in valley's depth — through every change of climate, and in 
despite of every accumulation of obstacle — will plough its onward way to its 
ordained level. 

There is that in the American citizen at this hour — there is a grandeur, 
a virtue, a magnanimity moistening and irrigating every pore of the Republic 
at this moment, which dashes refutation with the force of a cataract upon 
every doubt or prophecy, declaring that a lowered tone or a decayed spirit 
must ensue as a necessary consequence of the principles and customs now 
in vogue in this country. 

No difTerenees of opinion, no gloomy speculations, however, should be 
permitted to deface the protraiture of events which this glad day exhibits. 
How boldly and brightly the fourth day of July stands out upon the page 
of History ! With what an electrical splendor it bursts upon the vision, and 



( 7 ) 

towering into the mid-heaven, as it were the sun of a new sjstem, flashes 
warningly over the gloomy and crumbling despotisms of Europe. 

Illustrious day ! How dazzling are thy many exemplifications of heroic 
patriotism — restricted to no sex, age or condition, but characterizing alike, 
the humblest no less memorably than the proudest co-actors in thy glorious 
enterprise ! How various and thrilling thy scenes — now genial and luminous 
as a summer sky, now sombre and lowering as a bursting storm cloud. How 
splendid the triumphs thou dost rehearse, and as it were, silently re-enact ! 
How vast and ennobling the change thou didst work on the face of the 
world, and in the progress and condition, present and prospective, of the 
whole wide spread race of man ! Thou art indeed an epoch to date from — 
an immortal remembrancer — a museum of glorious relics, more splendid and 
enduring than statuary or painting ! The resolute mother of the Republic 
whom thou didst truly bring forth in sorrow, thou can'st not cease to return 
and exhort and animate her children amid scenes of cloudless joy; in the 
midst of expanding Empire and amid the universal diffusion of Christianity, 
Liberty and Science. 

When the myriad imposing events and consequences which this day 
presents to every mind at all attuned to the contemplation of things, simple 
indeed in their lineaments, but really the work of a great Master, are opened 
to my mental view in connection with the time, the place and ten thousand 
fancies and realities, both pleasing and sad, as they flit o'er my memory, it 
is, I assure you fellow citizens, with unfeigned diffidence and misgiving, that 
I venture to proceed in a simple, crude manner to occupy the time usually 
appropriated to this branch of the day's exercises. 

You will permit me to remark that the subject is most grand in its char- 
acter and scope. More than competent for a tongue, never so gifted, a 
genius never so vivid — blending in harmonious union the softer graces of 
simplicity with the deeper mysteries of the sublime. I therefore approach 
it with solemn reserve, venturing merely to review some of its more obvious 
lineaments and leaving its more grave and philosophical principles for deeper, 
abler management. 

It is well known to us all that the custom of honoring this day — an 
obligatory custom if you please — a custom which has grown with our growth 
and which has prevailed among our countrymen from the formation of our 
Government, is no flatulent and unmeaning parade ! It is no empty pageant 
for a whole undivided Nation with according mind, crowned with prosperity 
and exultant with hope, to come together regularly and with united voice, 
thank a propitious Heaven and a thrice illustrious ancestry for the blissful 
assurances of liberty, property, the pursuit of happiness and untrammelled 
conscience. Every grateful heart approves, reason sanctions and a virtuous 
antiquity commends it. Ages past and gone, when this now populous and 
enlightened continent was wrapt in the mysterious solitude of the ocean, the 
pride of Attica then luminous with the cultivation of letters and of liberty, 
when her days were palmiest and her glory brightest, was studious to per- 
petuate the virtue and genius of her citizens by consecrating to them crowns 



(8) 

of laurel, by rearing monuments, temples and statues, and by celebrating n 
oration and in song the anniversary of great achievements. It was the 
beautiful and animating custom of the republican Romans, when their virtue, 
their love of country and their power were most pre-eminent, to bestow 
triumphs, medals and ovations in honor and in commemoration of their sol- 
diers, their orators, their poets and their statesmen. It is known to have 
been the uniform custom of all nations — now alive in the memory of men — 
of whatever tribe or tongue. Christian or Heathen, to rescue (in the language 
of Herodotus) "from oblivion the memory of former incidents, and to render a 
just tribute of renown to great and wonderful actions," by setting apart 
intervals wherein to celebrate the virtues of some departed sage or hero — 
wherein to recapitulate the triumphs of the country in the country's cause: — 
And that not solely as a testimonial of grateful remembrance thereof, but 
more especially to sanction what is abstractly good and noble in the species, 
and inspire and cultivate in the present and commend to the future an 
ardent ambition, not only to^emulate but to excel if possible, the enviable 
greatness of the past. "Lives there a man with soul so dead" — breathes 
there a single creature endowed with a discerning mind unaffected by such 
examples — uninspired by such demonstrations ! The man who can coldly 
peruse the annals of an illustrious past and scoff at the grateful homage 
paid by an intelligent and emulative people to a finished character or an 
exalted achievement, instead of trembling with emotion and gathering there- 
from burning incentives to lofty effort in the pursuit of fame and honor, is fit 
only for " treasons, stratagems and spoils.'' 

Happily for our beloved country, she has fe'.v if any such pestilent citizens 
to clog or infect the industry, vigor and high desert by which her children 
are so eminently distinguished. I may say with entire safety, and the citi- 
zen of no other government on the globe can apply the same remark to his 
own country, that there is not a man, woman or child, within the broad area of 
these United States with any, the least pretensions to intelligence, unfamiliar 
with the deeds of that serried host of orators, soldiers and patriots, who 
have risen and shone and become the favorites of fame from time to time, 
throughout the progress of and subsequent to the revolutionary era. If then 
we are to be influenced by a most salutary example and usage characteristic 
of the most enliglitened nations in every era of the world, and which observa- 
tion and sound policy equally commend, tliis day should ever be proudly and 
signally distinguished. If ever any people had cause to be proud of their 
nation's origin — if ever any people had cause to celebrate their country's 
soldiers, their country's statesmen, and their country's triumphs, and catch 
inspiration from a protracted career of glorious toil and invincible valor, 
surely the American people, the citizens of these United Republican States, 
where God and man seem to have combined to furnish them with all the 
elements of grandeur and happiness, more especially and with more incon- 
testlble propriety, than any other people, ancient or modern, assemble together 
on each national anniversary and in the presence of the ripening youth of 
both sexes, recount o'er and o'er again the virtues of the dead, the deeds of 



(9 ) 

the departed, the birth and growth, and splendor and amplitude of that stupen- 
dous empire, (crowned too with "the fairest fabric," in the language of the 
eloquent Clay, " of human government, that ever rose to animate the hopes 
of civilized man,") which a brave and magnanimous ancestry, by many a 
hard fought battle on land and on sea, wrenched from an unhallowed grasp 
and with transcendant bounty bequeathed posterity. 

I hope my countrymen will never become the least insensible to the price- 
less value of that bequest ! I hope my countrymen will never become so 
inflamed by the conflict of opinion or so indignant at the impudence of error, 
as to lose sight of that eternal vigilance and that rational concession, which 
will ever be requisite to preserve the symmetry and beauty of this our com- 
mon inheritance ! I hope this generation will never forget that they are in 
the beneficial possession of an indivisable estate of incalculable value, which 
they, by the act of God and their ancestors upon the one side, and by their own 
concurring, obligatory act upon the other, hold in sacred and in solemn trust 
for posterity in all time to come : And that if by any misdoing upon their 
part harm comes to the glorious trust which they hold and enjoy, they will 
be sternly required in that high court of universal jurisdiction, which shall 
pervade all eternity, by the Lord High Chancellor, who sees the hidden 
workings of the mind and reads the secret purposes of the heart, to solemnly 
answer and atone for the trust which they shall have abused with black 
ingratitude and violated faitb, to the ruin of millions born after them! It 
is the solemn lesson of history, that when a country ceases to treasure and 
profit by the fruits and the memory of her past experience — and a people to 
honor and emulate the good and great, that country's doom is sealed, her 
glory is departed, and the day of her disastrous destiny is e'en dawning, 
and that people will speedily become wanderers and vagrants, the igno- 
minous slaves or tools of illegitimate power. Destitute of honor or trust, 
sunken in their own esteem, bankrupt in that of the world, all moral worth 
and dignity will then have fled from them forever with the last shriek of 
expiring liberty, as in the living instance of the wretched degenerate 
Greek, who now that he is to all seeming dead to the genius, liberty and 
fire of his glorious progenitors, fawns, cheats and cringes at the feet of a 
barbarian master. 

"Yes, self-abasement paved the way, 
To villain bonds and despot sway." 

I have not dreamed that such ignoble degeneracy can ever find a victim 
or a votary here. Here every breast will continue to burn, every eye to 
brighten, every heart to swell and every virtue to expand and difi"use itself 
at the bare mention of the hallowed names of Lexington, of Concord, of 
Bunker Hill and of Yorktown, of Warren, of Prescott, of Marion and 
of Green ! 

Having been more lengthy in the confused preliminary remarks which I 
have made than I designed, I hasten to attempt a rapid and very imme- 
thodical review of some of the prominent features in the origin and pro- 
gress of the revolutionary struggle — its successful issue, and the rapid 



(10) 

growth and continued prosperity of the Republic under our present glorious 
constitution. 

One of the remarkable men — and there were many of them — who flour- 
ished at the period of tlie revolution of '76, once observed, in substance, that 
the revolution was finished before the war commenced : That the events 
which preceded the conflict at arms had efi'ectually, in a moral point of 
view, destroyed forever the potency of king-craft in the forests and prairies 
of America. The force of that remark will readily discover itself to the 
mind employed in calmly investigating the origin and character of the col- 
onists, their manner of living, their remote detachment from other and more 
civilized countries, in connection with the mis-conceived, ill-applied, and op- 
pressive policy of Great Britain throughout a series of years, marked by 
rapacious exaction or total neglect and abandonment, down to the time when 
the crown assumed tlie more immediate and exclusive management of the 
domestic and local affairs of the colonies. The primary, the really producing 
causes, of the subsequent independence of the colonies, are not, it is thought, 
to be ascribed chiefly to the circumstances with which the colonists were 
surrounded and vexed at, or near the period when the open revolt occurred. 
Many years of, in one sense, almost unrestrained freedom before those more 
obvious and eventual causes began to operate in extenso, had unfitted the peo- 
ple for the iniquitous refinements of despotic government. A natural and inarti- 
ficial equity had taken a fast hold upon their minds, and although their tongues 
may not have expressed it at that early time, yet their sturdy natures and 
unadulterated souls demanded a total exemption from all submission to the 
old, slavish and rotten systems of oppression prevalent all over the old world. 
They had tasted the luxury of freedom, and a large portion of them had been 
reared within her delightful pale. They had never felt, or had forgotten the 
pusillanimity of implicit subjection to one imperfect, capricious human will, 
and felt, and thought, and acted, and aspired, like men who had discovered 
within themselves free and lofty souls, that bade them bow their heads to 
no man, nor to any thing made by the hands of man. Those feelings and 
impressions grew with each successive generation. A variety of accidents 
and influences stimulated and confirmed them. Gallant and enlightened 
men were continually pouring in among them and congratulating the 
colonists upon their separation from the intolerance, penury and extortion 
which desolated Europe. The pictures which these men drew to the colonists, 
wedded them still more irrevocably to their free and bold lives, and power- 
fully contributed to the formation of that stern self-reliance and antipathy 
to tyranny which ultimately led to the most important consequences. It is 
to such sources as these we must look for some of the mediate causes of the 
revolution which later and more imperious events quickened and exploded. 
Those early and intrepid pioneers, like our own invincible Boone, preferred 
the crack of the rifle, tlie wild woods home and the trail of the savage, to 
the crowded city and the apathy of repose. For with the one they asso- 
ciated freedom in opinion and in conscience; with the other they had 
experienced the most serious and intolerable evils. As those heroic and 
single minded men, one after one, band after band, and ship load after ship 



(11) 

load, left their royal masters in their native climes, and ploughed their un- 
friended way to this then unexplored land, the remorseless and insatiable 
cupidity of the European princes like a blood hound, snuffing the scent of 
its pitiless game, astutely discovered a new field for extortion and wealth, 
and entered into a heated rivalry to strengthen their friends and possessions 
in the New World, by encouraging and rewarding immigration. It will, 
however, be recollected as one among the greatest grievances of the colonies 
that immigration was subsequently forbidden, the population of the colonies 
imperiously cut off, and their naturalization laws rendered futile. It served 
the purposes of a heartless policy to stimulate it at the time of which wo 
are treating. Dazzled by the prospect of immense hoards of wealth from the 
acquisition of American territory, ignorant of the progress of man and the 
rapid inception of liberty in an incorrupt atmosphere, beyond the stern eye 
and merciless chain of tyranny — those rival princes did not dream that they 
were only feeble, self-deluded instruments, blindly working in fulfilment of 
the secret purposes of a Sovereig?i greater than themselves, to develope, or 
prepare the way for the future development, of an Empire, the chosen tem- 
ple of freedom, the asylum of the oppressed, and the admiration and hope 
of the universal human family. 

It would be impossible to mistake the necessary inference from the history 
of the period — that the sparks, so to speak, of which the revolution was the 
resulting flame, were, it may have been unconsciously on their part, borne to 
this land in some good degree in the inflexible bosoms of those brave and 
pious worthies, who, flying from religious and political tyranny under James 
I, and his successor, Charles I, forsaking country, home, kindred — rending 
asunder all those tender and exquisite ties which make life precious and 
and beautiful — with nothing but a frail, creaking, quivering bark to protect 
them and their families from the engulphing wave and the howling tempest, 
boldly committed themselves and all they had left them to God and the 
ocean, and sped on their way in quest of liberty and the right of conscience 
in an inhospitable wilderness. The forest and the savage offered no terrors 
to the Puritans compared with those they had met with at the hands of civi- 
lized man. Planting their feet upon the rock of Plymouth — now a classic 
and the most sacred and consecrated spot on the continent unconnected with 
the glory of battle — and bending their knees in pious gratitude to Heaven 
for their successful voyage, they rejoiced that though all the endearments 
and fond associations of youth and birth had been swept away forever, they 
were finally in a laud of freedom where they might think and act as freemen 
should. And as the forest receded before their vigorous arms, and the soil 
blossomed under their practiced husbandry, and brave sons and lovely daugh- 
ters sprang up around them, the gray haired sire failed not to portray in 
"thoughts that breathed and words that burned," the suffering and bondage 
which exiled him from all he once held dear and familiar — failed not to rouse 
an implacable animosity to every species of oppression ; nor failed to enjoin 
upon his children to the remotest generation of man, the priceless value of 
freedom and the heavenly felicity of untrammeled conscience. Wo be to 



( 1-2 ) 

that sect or association of people who shall ever attempt to control by any 
arbitrary means whatever, the free and full and unrestrained exercise of 
opinion and judgment upon any subject, sacred, civil, or moral, under the 
Constitution of the Union. 

Having been left to the enjoyment of almost perfect liberty for a series of 
years, the colonists were, in some degree, happy, prosperous, and content. 
Far removed from the turbid lake of European politics, they were suddenly 
roused from their pastoral security and enjoyment, by finding themselves and 
their new homes dragged into its tempestuous waves. They received the 
first evidences of the active presence of that crushing prerogative, from 
which they had fled to the lair of the savage, with anxious and fevered 
brows. They watched its irregular and blighting extension around and over 
them with gloomy foreboding. A spirit of indomitable resistance was se- 
cretly at work in their hardy and indignant bosoms. They saluted the first 
envoys of the arch-oppressor beyond the seas with all the demonstrations of 
duty and submission — but they could not conceal their jealousy nor banish 
their concern, when the arrival of an envoy, a master, or a tax gatherer, be- 
came an every day occurrence. The younger population, imbued with the 
wild freedom of the country, fresh, bold, and sanguine, their imagination unen- 
thralled by any recollection of the pomp, power, and overwhelming machinery of 
the royal state and authority, unknown to them save by tradition, were less 
able, or less disposed to silence the murmurs of their dissatisfaction, with the 
aspect things were assuming, than their more temperate and experienced 
progenitors. Were they in their turn to be driven out of the wilderness as 
their fathers had been driven out of the cities over the wave? Was there 
no refuge to be found? Was Tyranny "with her heart wrapped up in triple 
brass" everywhere? They concluded she must be everywhere but there 
where brave men had determined she should not abide ! Here then we may 
discover the incipient injustice of Great Britain — the commencement of 
wrong and injury upon her part, and the inborn, glorious, but still chastened 
spirit of resistance in the colonists. It is, therefore, in the first place to the 
effects of the unrelenting persecution to which they were subjected in their 
old, and viore than menaced with in their new homes, thus stinging them into 
a god-like phrensy; and in the second place, to a rooted and overwhelming 
sense of the duty and the necessity of freedom which each day's experience 
strengthened and confirmed ; and, lastly, to the bold, lofty, aspiring, and in- 
trc[)id spirit, impatient of control, matured and invigorated by the romantic 
enterprise of their perils and pursuits, the transporting magnificence of 
American scenery, and the wordless sublimity of mountain and plain which 
pierced the clouds and ranged the continent — it is, also, to these abundant 
sources we must revert wlien we seek the causes which predisposed the col- 
onists to plunge into revolution. 

Stimulated by various motives, attracted by fascinating inducements, and 
withheld by no future promise in perpetual thraldom, industry and enterprise 
slipped their yoke and poured into the country with the impetuosity of an 
avalanche, quickly, with their more than magic wand working wondrous 



(13) 

changes in the country of the savage and the bear, converted into the free- 
man's and the Christian's refuge. There is one attribute of the nature of 
man so essential to the utility and application of all the rest, that it o'er- 
tops them by the measure of great results, as the giant o'ertops the dwarf. 
If there is one thing out of heaven to which the mighty word omnipotent 
may, with even a semblance of propriety, be applied — that thing — that in- 
telligent, all-efficient principle is 'mdustry! Do but bring it to bear upon 
the energies of the human will, and upon the energies of the human mind, 
and oceans dwindle into rivulets and mountains sink into plains, beneath its 
overwhelming tread. I believe it is, next to that of an immortal soul, and 
that mediatory atonement by which that soul is saved, the most glorious and 
divine gift of Heaven to man! What has it not — what may it not accom- 
plish? The building up and the pulling down of amazing empires and 
states are but as threads and toys, strings and tops, in the grasp of this un- 
imaginable power. In 1492 it plunged with eccentrical daring into the un- 
fathomable seas, and dragged from their cavernous depths and unfrequented 
wastes, the world-wide continent on which we live. In 1620, bounding from 
the lap of repose, it struck into the American wilds on the Atlantic coast, 
and lo ! to its indomitable mandate impenetrable forests reeled, and fell, and 
melted into ahscs upon the earth over which they had for ages spread a per- 
petual night. Onward, onward it sped, and in its n arward pathway multi- 
plying husbandmen happily coursed the plow, scientific surveyors designated 
the division of estates, abundance demanded and constructed spacious gran- 
aries, increasing population erected and adorned hamlets, towns, and cities, 
piety bent the knee and raised the paean of thanksgiving in buildings dedi- 
cated to holy worship, the press threw over the face of things a ray or two 
of that flood of light which now blazes around us in meridian splendor, and 
all things in the theretofore productiveless waste from the screech of the 
owl, the yell of the savage, and the rapid tread of the stealthy beast of prey, 
to the conquered subservience of inanimate nature herself succumbed to the 
onward and unmeasured strides of transforming industry. But to return 
from this digression. The rising importance of the colonies did not fail to 
strike the imagination and rouse the partially dorm.ant cupidity and vigi- 
lance of luxurious tyranny. A more than common interest was suddenly 
evinced for the welfare, forsooth, of the colonies by the government of Great 
Britain. How was this instantaneous transition from sluggish not to say 
criminal indifference to be explained? Was it not adding insult to injury! 
After the colonists had been left without aid or sympathy to encounter and 
struggle with all those appalling hardships and unparalleled terrors which so 
frightfully distinguished the progress of the Englishman at his every step in 
this country — privation, solitude, toil — midnight slaughter, and midday 
havoc — the terrific thunder-bolt of savage hordes, bursting without a mo- 
ment's warning over the settlements, bathing them in the innocent blood of 
women and infants, and with one fell swoop obliterating the work of years — 
after they had partially overcome these almost insuperable barriers to their 
prosperity, and had begun to reap a little harvest of mild repose, the good 



(14) 

king, forsooth, bethought him of his loyal subjects in North America! As 
a feeble band, hunted down, tortured, and staked by the ferocious natives, 
his Majesty knew them not, or was so immersed in the profound economy of 
his proper realm that he could not even in the plenitude of his overgrown 
power send a regiment or two to protect the sufferers. But when by their own 
stout arms and intrepid hearts they had driven the red man into the far off 
recesses of the forest, and goodly cities and luxuriant agriculture began to 
beautify the land and make the wilderness habitable, the crown was pene- 
trated with paternal tenderness — almost overcome by the extreme aculeness 
of his sensibility touching the exposed condition of his beloved transatlantic 
subjects — the dear, dutiful., devoted people! 

The secret of this change of policy had its source in a cold-blooded, cal- 
culating avarice; "coming events cast their shadows before them." He saw 
that in all human probability the self-reliance, dauntless courage, and un- 
bending free-will, roused and concentrated by their vigilant, heroic, and per- 
ilous lives, would, if not curbed and trained to the bit and the harness, in 
time, swell into a permanent sense and pride of independence wholly incom- 
patible with the purposes which he now, and which, perhaps, his predecessors 
before him, steadily designed them to subserve. Hence his deep solicitude 
to take them, without a moment's delay, under his benignant wing — to nestle 
the defenceless babe of future empire in his royal breast — and to warm and 
invigorate it by his rapturous caresses. The colonists, in no wise deceived 
by this mere acting, thought of Judas, and involuntarily shuddered. We 
can fancy the anxious monarch exclaiming, "From this moment the very 
firstlings of my heart shall be the firstlings of my hand." He straitway 
summoned to his presence the host of liveried dependants, who glittered and 
pranced about his throne, and "crooked the supple knee," and pinning a list 
of instructions to their sleeves, and breathing into their nostrils the breath 
of extortion, wafted them to this side of the Atlantic, to re-establish the 
same odious misrule and distribute the same blighting proscription, which, 
years before had driven many of the bravest and best Englishmen in the 
realm, to seek a dangerous refuge on a distant continent. 

Then commenced, I may say, in a more tangible form, that long and un- 
mitigated train of wrongs and injuries, which deepening and widening, and 
becoming day by day more aggravated and vexatious, as the misconceived 
gentleness and forbearance of the colonists delusively encouraged the cruelty 
and rapacity of their oppressors to persist in mad and heartless schemes, 
finally eventuated in the grand tragedy of the revolution. 

It should not be forgotten by that respectable persuasion of people who 
shrink with instinctive horror from the bare idea of overthrowing a govern- 
ment, how oppressive and iniquitous soever, if it be sanctioned by time and 
power, — that, with that train of wrongs and injuries, commenced a patient, 
yet dignified, endurance on the part of the suffering colonists, to which the 
conduct of no people known to history can furnish a parallel. Day after 
day, and year after year, they bore the heavy hand and smarting rod of 
relentless power, without one indecent murmur. They beheld themselves 



(15) 

and their tender families sternly and contemptuously stripped of all the 
dearest rights and immunities transmitted them by their forefathers, and 
held, and rightfully held, and enjoyed, by the sanction of venerable and 
universal custom. 

But the measure of their wrongs was not yet full. They beheld perfumed 
strangers, unlike them in mind, in manners, and in feeling — diifering, totally 
diflfering, with them in education, and repugnant to them in habits, adverse 
to them in interest, offensive to them in association, and bound to the country 
by no tie save that of rapacity and love of outrage : these men they saw, 
clothed with despotic power — proud, sinister and insulting — landing in their 
midst, and, without the knowledge or consent of the people, making and 
annulling laws with the arbitrary caprice of petty tyrants. All these, and a 
thousand other grievances, they bore with uncomplaining fortitude, until, it 
seems, to have forborne yet longer, would have been either more or less 
than man ! 

As in the case of individuals, pacific and temperate in mind and dispo- 
sition, so in that of communities : a wrong done, or a right invaded, may be 
overlooked for a time, from a desire to shun a painful rupture which may 
not have been contemplated by a heedless, unthinking agent ; but where 
repeated acts of ruthless violence are made to follow each other up in rapid 
and provoking succession, the mind becomes so irritated and inflamed by the 
apparent evil design of the wrong-doer, that resistance, though the sudden 
impulse of the passions becomes the just dictate of the conscience. 

Still, however, adhering to their original and uniform aversion to violent 
methods of redressing the increasing evils under which they groaned, the 
colonists restricted themselves to the mildest form of petitioning for relief 
through the medium of the provincial governors. They offered no resistance 
whatever to instituted authority : they did not wish to trammel or abridge 
it in its proper and legitimate functions ; but simply and solely prayed to be 
relieved from enumerated burdens which it would be utterly impossible 
longer to bear up under. Such was the submissive and conciliatory tone of 
the appeals of those noble men! How were they answered? Were they 
told in respectful language, that their petitions and prayers should be laid 
before the royal eye, and, if compatible with his Majesty's view of his duty 
to his subjects in the colonies, speedily granted ? Not one word, even, in a 
shape so questionable as that ! On the contrary, they were haughtily 
repelled; the petitioners angrily threatened, if not, in some instances, 
actually punished, for daring to intrude the sufferings of a gallant and 
numerous people upon the elegant leisure of the representative of royalty. 
Aye ! a vicious and corrupt administration, through its (if possible) more 
vicious and corrupt instruments, unblushingly scouted the meek complaints 
of a people, "who, (in the language of the indignant Junius,) complaining 
of an act of the legislature, were outraged by an unwarrantable stretch of 
the prerogative, and, supporting their claims by argument, were insulted 
with declamation." 

To such a frightful length had the iniquitous and unheard of impositions 



(16) 

of the King of Great Britain and his lordly advisers been carried, that the 
glorious spirit which broke out and electrified the entire globe, in seventy- 
five and six, began to display premonitory symptoms, which should have 
been a warning to the oppressors to desist at once, ere it should be forever 
too late. But " Ephraim was wedded to his idols." The fiat of the cast 
die had gone forth — the liubicoa was already crossed! The cry, "'tis too 
late! 'tis too late! " which so recently reverberated throughout the Chamber 
of Deputies in France, and fixed the dissolution of another despotism, would 
have sounded in vain to have roused the oppressors from their bestial vain 
glory and their gluttony of misrule. No compromise, however, could then 
have been efi'ected. The pregnant times had ripened for other more sum- 
mary, conclusive and emphatic forms of redressive action. Every mind in 
the colonies, rending asunder the slavish shackels which bound it, roused all its 
pent-up energies, and entered intensely into a full investigation of the origin, 
nature and extent of the public grievances, and speculated boldly as to the 
means most suitable for the reformation of the wide and pernicious evils 
flowing around and over the colonies. Their manly faculties, surprised and 
delighted with an unaccustomed field for mental activity, teemed with expe- 
dients and fretted with the impatience of republican energy. A regular 
opposition was speedily organized to resist any future vexatious measures on 
the part of the British ministry. Entreaties and remonstrances were sent, 
time after time, to the King and Parliament, each and all of which were, in 
every instance, received with contumely and reprehension. Not one single 
appeal was made of that whole series, from beginning to ending, which was 
not marked with tlie meek obedience of dutiful children. If savage and inac- 
cessible authority deigned subsequently to reply at all to them, they were 
charged with being mutinous, disloyal, ungrateful- Mutinous! — how so? 
If, in casting their reflection back to the origin of the colonies, and tracing 
their progress they recognized in that interesting canvass of thrilling events 
such pictures as these : Here, the exiles' look of cheerful assurance that, in 
their wild, obscure retreat — in their cheerless wigwam, and their "rugged cabin 
of moldering mud " — they might nurture their families, and worship their 
God in peace and quiet : Ihcrc, their meekness and content in privation, shut 
out from the busy scenes, the comfortable homes, the luxury and pride of 
cities and courts, gradually collecting around them some of the rude conve- 
niences of life, totally neglected, quite, quite forgotten by their lawful 
protector, the incumbent of the Crown. Here, the homely, austere resort of 
conscience and courage suddenly changed into a scene of unnatural death : 
there, the quick descent of the tomahawk upon those devoted heads — the 
reeking scalp, the smoking cottage, and the lacerated victim at the burning 
stake. Here, the savage finally flying before the unaided, heroic valor of the 
unquailing pioneer, and peace and plenty and security beginning permanently 
to yield to the obstinate and prayerful perseverance of the settlers : there, a 
bright gleam of sunshine suddenly and cruelly extinguished by the power 
which should have thundered in their defense. Here, the deep and galling 
indentation of the iron heel of the task-master: there, the inroad of the my- 



midons of power, Imnting clown their nnpitied victims oven in the very trail 
of the routed savage. Here, innamerahle scenes of extortion, constraint and 
plunder : Ihcre, the gentle, plaintive remonstrance, the angry rebuke thereto, 
then the resigned submission to new ordeals of injustice. Here, the crushed 
hopes and ruined fortunes bestrewn in melancholy fragments along the deso- 
lated track of the merciless tools of power: there, the living generations 
bending and writhing with the yoke they themselves had borne in continua- 
tion of the enoniiities inflicted, as we liave seen, upon their ancestors : if, 
in contemplating these sad and liarrowing j)icturcs, still subduing the manly 
rage of outraged nature, the act of merely making an earnest representation 
of their suffering condition to the party competent, and in conscience and by 
his oath of office bound, to correct it, may be so construed as to constitute 
mutiny, then, indeed, were the colonists mutinous! Disloyal! — how soV 
If to be proudly indignant at wrong piled on wrong, and injury multiplied 
upon injury — if a long deferred determination not to be trampled any longer 
in the dust of power and broken on the wheel of tyranny — if the loss of all 
respect and esteem for a sovereign who proved liimself not only insensible to 
their uncommon fidelity, but was himself, perhaps, t]ie procuring cause of 
their wretchedness — a sovereign, however, wliom they yet recognized and 
obeyed, — if these things constitute disloyalty, then were the colonists dis- 
loyal! Ungrateful! insolent reproach! Gratitude, that tender and exqui- 
site emotion of the heart peculiar to breasts of the finest mould, which 
springs responsive to a good intent or a kindly sentiment of regard and in- 
terest, deriving perpetual delight from the reciprocation of good offices — 
which pre-supposes a friend, a benefactor ! Alas ! for kingly dominion and 
kingly arrogance, that friend, that benefactor, sat not on the throne of Eng- 
land! The colonists asked him for protection, and he proscribed them — 
they asked him for mercy, and'he heaped coals of fire upon their heads — 
they called him sovereign, father, and he responded rebels, slaves! 

"And wliere liis frown of liatred darkly fell, 
Hope, withering, fled and mercy sighed farewell." 

Where lies the ingratitude? If at the door of the colonists, then were they 
ungrateful! It was not, it could not be, ungrateful in them to ask permis- 
sion to enjoy the country which they had made habitable under the laws and 
constitution to which they as Englishmen, had an indubitable right. Do wc 
not see, then, that they were censured for speaking in their own behalf, and 
denounced, bitterly denounced, for exercising the natural right of being heard 
in their own defense — a right so universal in its diffusion that the meanest 
criminal enjoys it unmolested. These things, and only these, constitute the 
head and front of their offending. 

When at last the domineering and infatuated ministry condescended to 
reply formally to the oft repeated prayers of the colonies, asking to be rep- 
resented in Parliament as of common right, they arrogantly asserted that it 
was the absolute " power and option of Great Britain to bind the colonies in 
all cases whatsoever," and proceeded sternly to carry out that enormous as- 



(18) 

sumption even unto the minutest details of colonial affairs. The colony of 
Virginia at that time — as she has steadily continued to be — the abode of 
some of the brightest minds and choicest spirits that ever adorned a Senate 
or conducted an Empire to glory, crpelled through her House of Burgesses 
that absurd and despotic usurpation of Parliament, and with characteristic 
boldness declared that no "Power on earth had a right to impose taxes on 
the people, or to take the smallest portion of their property without their 
consent given by their representatives." 

As the controversy tlius waxed warmer the colonists became more commit- 
ted and absorbed in the issue, more conversant with the exact nature and 
extent of their rights, and move bold and tenacious in demanding full and 
final redress of all their accumulated grievances. Every circumstance con- 
nected with the subsisting difficulties, clearly denoted that a storm was 
approaching of fearful and mighty import. But the British ministry le- 
mained insensible that they were slumbering on a magazine. Instead of 
identifying the prosperity of the colonies with the prosperity of the mother 
countr}" — instead of treating and temporizing with the former upon a scale 
of liberal and fraternal policy, and by a course of mildness and forbearance 
seeking to heal all wounds and bind the colonies by reciprocal good offices 
in closer union and complete reliance upon their fairness, their favorite meas- 
ures, and all their acts resembled more those of a perverse, petulant child, 
than the deliberated proceedings of a body of men, composed at times of 
the most enlightened statesmen on the globe. Instead of relaxing they ab- 
solutely tightened the reins of power. Their representatives in this country 
in no wise admonished by the signs of the times, governed their provinces 
as with a rod of iron, and justified every volition of their tyrannous will, and 
every act of their mal-administration, by the immoral and insulting assump- 
tion that "might is right." The eyes of those paid oppressors were shut to 
a population groaning under inhuman rapacity — their cars were deaf to the 
most affectionate remonstrances — their hearts were insensible to the touch of 
pity, and their consciences, seared as with an hot iron — proof against re- 
morse — forgetful of the salutary precepts of impartial history — unmindful 
that "Cj-csar had his Brutus, Charles the First, his Cromwell" — altogether 
ignorant of the future, and bloated with present power, they continued to 
feed their greedy avarice and grind their reeking victims until the musketry 
of Lexington and Concord, and the cannon of Bunker Ilill opened their 
sealed eyes, pricked their deaf ears, and shooting across the Atlantic, and 
reverberating throughout the vast cxjilorations of civilized man, announced 
in tones of thunder to the universal world, the birth of a iircnt ueMe.rn eni- 
pirc on the continent of America — free and untrammeled in law and in con- 
science, as the wind that roams the trackless wave — every child a prince, 
and every man a monarch ! 

The era of congresses now rose above tlie horizon, and spread its bright- 
ening lustre and healing beams over the dark and troubled fortunes of the 
people. The first general Congress ever held upon this continent met on the 
sixth day of June, in the year 1705, in accordance with the suggestion and 



(19) 

advice of an enlightened and patriotic son of Massachusetts, Mr. James 
Otis, to concert at once some decisive method of mitigating an evil which 
they were resolved "had increased, was increasing, anjl ought to be dimin- 
ished." A short time subsequent to that period, the infamous stamp act 
beneath whose pestilential shade and blighting exhalations every dejtart- 
ment of colonial industry and commerce was likely to wither and shrink 
into naught, was planted in the country and elicited that universal sirocco of 
scorn and indignation which manifested itself in every form and mode of 
disgust and denunciation — the welkin resounded with mournful sounds of 
tolling bells — the thorough-fares echoed with groans — business was sus- 
pended — houses were closed — the very heavens frowned upon it, and the 
brows of peaceful men grew sable with omens of the gathering storm. In 
the absence of Hutchinson, Oliver, and others, the advisers and instruments 
of this shameless device, ludicrous effigies of their detested bodies were 
mounted.upon poles and trailed about in the midst of hooting and derision — 
particularly that of one miserable, ambling biped whose infamy is perpet- 
uated under the name of Hood, and who ran away like an avowed culprit to 
escape popular vengeance. Circular letters were distributed far and wide, by 
order of Congress, stimulating the people to be vigilant in the great work of 
national amelioration. Associations were formed to tend and feed with 
proper fuel the pure republican fire which oppression had kindled — among 
others, one in particular, which one cannot name but with peculiar compla- 
cency, the sons of liberty, composed of men of the highest order of mind 
and of the most rigid and incorruptible devotion to the cause of humanity 
and the happiness and fame of the colonics. The memory of George Grcn- 
ville, the inglorious author of the act, was stigmatized and caricatured in 
every possible manner by the incensed masses, and his effigy ignominiously 
burned. 

The groat soul of Patrick Henry, bursting its shroud of lethargy, unlocked 
the lofty energies of his will, and the Promethean fire of his genius, fanned 
into flame by the power it consumed, lit up the whole continent with its en- 
compassing grandeur ! 

•' In him Demosthenes was heard again; 
liiberty taught liim her Athenian strain ; 
She clothed liim with authority and awe, 
Spoke from his lips, and in iiis looks gave law. 
His speech, his form, his action full of grace, 
And all his country beaming in his face. 
He stood as some inimitable hand 
Would strive to make a Paul or Tully stand. 
No sycophant or slave that dared oppose 
Her sacred cause, but trembled when he rose ; 
And every venal stickler of the yolce. 
Felt himself crushed at the first word he spoke." 

It has been said of an eminent Grecian Philosopher — whose name is familiar 
to the school-boy — that while yet in his en die, Bees journeyed thither to shed 
honey upon his lips, so irresistibly captivating and persuasive was the grace- 
ful eloquence which subsequently distinguished him. It might, perhaps, be 
said with equal propriety of our Henry, that while yet a stripling wandering 



( 20 ) 

abstractedly tlirougli the forest with his gun upon his shoulder — or reclining 
Iistlcssl3% to all appearance, on the margin of one of the rivers of his native 
"Virginia, with his fiaJiing tackle by his side, the genius of Liberty -was open- 
ing to his sublime imagination, and the spirit of prophecy was pouring into 
his luxuriant understanding the glorious destiny awaiting his country; and 
those burning sentiments and lofty strains which enabled him to take the 
immortal part he did in subverting tyranny, and in animating and enjbolden- 
ing liis countrymen in their darkest hours, and in the midst of their severest 
trials. Having thrown down the gauntlet of defiance, his zeal knew no abate- 
ment, his heart no fear, his energies no relaxation. "With the fierce and 
unerring eye of the Eagle — proud Emblem of our National freedom — he 
detected each covert encroachment npon the rights of his countrymen, and 
with the tongue of a Tully, and the fire of a martyr, converted them into 
beacon-lights to guide his country on through the gloom and havoc of revolu- 
tion, to glory and independence. Jlore gifted and more enlightened than Peter 
the hermit — like him, the fervor of his eloquence and the transcendant mag- 
nitude of his cause inspired every heart witli martial enthusiasm, and resolved 
every man a defender of the faith, sworn and dedicate to do battle in the 
name of Heaven and Liberty. The enemies of America themselves paid 
reluctant homage to the force of his commanding genius, when they declared 
that a series of resolutions which he drafted and recommended in a speech — 
such as he alone could make — in the Legislature of his State, acted like a 
torch thrown into a magazine — so powerfully did ihey contribute to arm and 
enfranchise the colonics. 

The introduction of the Stamp Act into this country was attended with 
innumerable incidents and demonstrations, not only full of interest to a cur- 
sory gleaner of exciting stories, but fraught with important instruction to the 
serious student of History and Government. Impossible as it proved to be 
to execute the measure agreeable to design, its mere nominal existence did 
more to estrange the colonics, enrage the people, and expedite the revolution, 
than any other single event which preceded it. Conceived of extortion, be- 
gotten of tyranny, and intended as a rod wherewith to humiliate, impoverish 
and debase its contemplated victims — its malicious sponsors saw it become 
recreant to their hope, destructive of their gainful expectations, and assume 
its conspicuous place in history as the harbinger of just laws, political equal- 
ity and national freedom. Among its resulting incidents, tliere are many 
which will not soon pass from the memory of man, nor ever fail to awaken 
emotion and pride in the breast of Americans ! The conduct of the Ameri- 
can women upon that occasion — as a mark of resentment of all restrictions 
upon colonial trade and commerce, whether direct or indirect — was so imblo, so 
devoted, that we may, with confident superiority, institute a parallel between 
them and the mothers and daughters of ancient Cartharge — who, in a patri- 
otic paroxism, tore their beautiful ringlets from their heads to make bow- 
strings for their archers to repel the invaders of their country. It was with 
a resolution more firm, and with an enthusiasm no less exalted, that the 
women of the colonies repelled each injurious assault upon their country's 



( 21 ) 

riglits! Forms of grace and beauty exhibited in not a few instances saga- 
city and fortitude not surpassed by those of the most veteran soldier, and 
made signal displays of that immutable steadfastness, devotion and energy 
vphicli they are so seldom afforded an opportunity to exhibit. They sliook the 
fantastic holiday drapery of European fashion from their graceful shapes, and 
proudly wrapping them in the fulds of the product of tlioir uwii spin- 
ning-wheels, iridignantly spurned every sort and semblance of British mer- 
chandise, howsoever useful, beautiful and luxuriant. The vanity of fine dress- 
ing was pitched to the winds, as unsuited to the serious complexion of the 
times. They gloried in wearing what they wove by their own skill and 
handy-craft, and faring sumptuously — not upon the dainties brought them 
in English ships — but upon what they planted, nurtured and gathered 
in with their own hands. King George and his lordly advisers, had they 
not been l)linded by obstinacy, avarice and cruelty, and given over irrevoca- 
bly to the error of their ways and the folly of their hearts, would have dis- 
covered in this sublime spectacle an omen of incalculable import to the British 
Empire; a modern and an equally appalling instance of the /^awr/ tcriling 
7ipoa Ike ivall, (if I may so speak,) and lent a more heedful ear to the modern 
Daniel — the admonitory voice of the sage and illustrious Franklin. What 
was the effect of the public spirit — the patriotic self-denial of those more 
than Spartan women ? The position they took was not the dictate of any 
witless caprice, nor any whimsical tantrum ! It was a triumphant illustration . 
of indignant innocence, of unsullied and heroic purity driven to brave and 
defy a relentless persecutor, as a last effort for self-protection, and the preser- 
vation of honor. It was a high moral example for the inspiration and the 
imitation of the sufferino-, comino- from that essential source which is the 
exuberant fountain of all that is purest and highest in man I Behold as the 
immediate and salutary effect of their self-denial, the inhabitants of all the 
populous manufacturing cities in England thrown into a panic by the conse- 
quential prostration of trade ! Behold thousands of manufacturers, mer- 
chants, and tradespeople of every description thrown out of employment 
— pennyless, without resources — melancholy dependents upon public charity ! 
The wretchedness of which the ministry intended the colonies to be the scene, 
was thus transferred in good part to their own doors ! The numerous large 
establishments wherein these people had found constant employment, were 
forced to suspend operations in consequence of the refusal of the colonist? 
to buy their goods and wares. All the freight sent out returned to England 
without having been removed from the vessels, accompanied with the start- 
ling intelligence that the Americans utterly scorned to touch it till the Stamp 
Act should be rescinded ! These are pome of the minor effects of the con- 
duct of the Amercan women. Will they suffice 1 If not, turn your attention 
to the King's ministers — wise and mighty men — astounded, baffled, dismayed ; 
hooted at, and lampooned at every corner and in every cheap print. Look 
again at the two Houses of Parliament, actually inundated as it were, with 
petitions from the starving subjects of the King, begging with tears in their 



( 22 ) 

eyes, and starvation in their throats, the repeal of the odious measures, and 
then boast if you can, that you are descended from those peerless women 
who nerved themselves so promptly, so nobly, and conduced so largely to the 
gallant and eventually triumphant resistance made to injustice. 

The Stamp act was finally repealed, to the great joy of the people on both 
sides of the Atlantic. But Lord JS'orth, who succeeded Grenville in the 
ministry — young, arrogant and conceited — devised new schemes and modes 
of taxation and oppression. He quartered troops in Boston, and stationed 
fleets in her port, to brow-beat and awe the inhabitants into abject submis- 
sion. He sought to throw sand in the eyes of the colonists by repealing a 
series of odious measures, still secretly claiming and exercising the right of 
despotic taxation. lie abandoned a few offensive restrictions, but decep- 
tiously ujjheld tyrannical principles. He digested a huge system, carefully 
masked, which he designed to eventuate in renewed extortions, under the pre- 
tence of aiding the East India Company, and which resulted in the wild havoc 
made among the tea chests on shipboard in the Boston Harbor. A chosen 
band of unswerving spirits waited upon the royal tea chests, in court dress, 
and in sight of the applauding multitude, and in the presence of the ter- 
rified crew, hurled them indiscriminately into the flood. 

Such was the state of things, and such the spirit prevailing throughout 
the country, when, in the year 1774, on the r)th day of September, the great 
American Congress met in Philadelphia. The members of that Congress 
passed a series of eloquent and fearless resolutions declarative of their rights 
and applicable to the circumstances of the times, and adjourned to the lOth 
• of May, 1775. In the interim, the ball of the revolution had commenced 
rolling ! — American blood had been spilt ! — the war fever was abroad, and 
the combatants on both sides were preparing for the grand ending of the 
diiferences, for weal or for wo, which had been subsisting, in one form or 
another, from the earliest period of the colonies down to the fearful crisis 
then at hand. John Hancock — than whom Massachusetts never produced a 
more admirable man and enlightened patriot — had the distinguished honor of 
being the President of the Congress of 1775. The world, I am constrained 
to believe, never before — probably never since — witnessed such a collection 
of wise heads, brave hearts and eloquent tongues, as composed that illus- 
tuious body of men. '■ History," said the eloquent and lofty minded Pitt, 
" has been my favorite study ; and in the celebrated writings of antiquity I 
have often admired the patriotism of Greece and Rome: but, my lords, I 
must declare and avow, that in the master States of the world I know not 
the people nor the Senate, who, in such a complication of diflieult circum- 
stances, can stand in preference to the Delegates of America assembled in 
general Congress at Philadelphia." There were Jefferson, and Adams, and 
Difikinson, and Wentworth, and Hancock, and Sherman, and Robert Morris, 
and Richard Hem-y Lee, ami Carroll, and Laurens, and others — erect and 
glorious — their stern virtues and their commanding talents upon high 
ddiberation bent ! — their thoughts, beyond the limits of their frames, fixing 
the fate of empires. 

At the next session of the Congress of the Colonies, on the 7th day of 
June, l/7o, Richard Henry Lee, of Virginia, a man — 

"A cotnbinalioii and a form, indeed. 
Where every {rod did socm to set liis seal, 
To give the world assurance of a man" — 



(23) 

rose m that august assembl}-, and pi'oposcd a resolution, which, if lie had 
never done or said aught beside in his whole life, would have, of itself, 
inscribed his honored name (where it now beams with no borrowed light) on 
the brightest scroll of enduring fame. On the second da}^ of July he had 
the ineffable pleasure of witnessing the adoption of that resolution. Hope 
beamed in every eye and nerved every arm, when it was known that the 
delegates in Congress had boldly resolved, '• that these United Colonies are, 
and of right ought to be, free and independent States — that they are 
absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown ; and that all political 
connexion between them and the State of Great Britain is, and of right 
ought to be, totally dissolved." Was that resolution but as a " sounding- 
brass and a tinkling cymbal? " Was it the rash expression of rash rebellion? 
or was it the death knell of wrong and injury? — the solemn note of dawning 
liberty — the language of irulh and prophecy, heralding what time and justice 
would sanction and perpetuate? Clamber upon the summit of the hii^hest 
peak upon the earth's surface, and with a power of sight magnified beyond 
the gift or ken of created man, measure this wonderful continent — the 
expansive limits of the territory of that rcbel/ious Congress : range your 
gaze, boldly, freely, from the East to ttie West, from the North to the South; 
from the Atlantic wave to the Pacific shore ; from the tall forests of Maine 
to the gold mines of California — and you will just then be in the first rudi- 
ments of that education which will be requisite to enable you to begin an 
estimate of the stupendous consequences resulted and resulting from that 
glorious volition of will in the American Congress. 

At this era in the progress of events, we are called upon to observe the 
colonial patriots in an attitude which will awaken within the bosom a more 
engrossing interest, perhaps, than the foregoing events. In support of the 
tone of Lee's resolution, armies were speedily organized. Every citizen threw 
away the peaceful instruments of husbandry and conmierce, and noiselessly flew, 
with whatever weapon he could procure or ingeniously devise, to the rallying 
point or the post of danger. Congress selected a private gentleman, pointed 
out, we might almost say, by the finger of Destiny, to be the " head and 
front" of his species, and sent forth by the Omnipotent, 

" In sight of mortal and immortal powers, 
As on a boundless theatre, to run 
The great career of justice ; to exalt 
His generous aim to all diviner deeds ; 
To chase each partial purpose from his breast, 
And through the mists of passion and of sense, 
And through the tossing tide of chance and pain, 
To hold his course, unfaltering, while the voice 
Of truth and virtue, up the steep ascent 
Of Nature, calls him to his high reward, 
The applauding smiles of earth and Heaven." 

George Washington of Virginia, was selected to lead their little bands of 
raw recruits against the trained and veteran armies of the strongest power 
on the habitable globe. Eschewing every consideration foreign from the 
identical purpose for which he was singled out — solemnly dedicating himself 
and his fame to the upholding of a more than doubtful cause, in full view of 
the scaffold and the gibbet — Atlas like, he bore up under a world of difficul- 
ties, and, by the greatness of his soul, his fortitude, the purity of his motives, 
his achievements and his moderation, outshone the brightest examples in 
history. Instantly appearing at the head of the patriot army, he instituted 
discipline, inspired hope, and infused vigor and enterprise into every grade. 



(24) 

AVc have now accouiplislied a very imperfect review of some of the events 
precedent to the revolution. I liave been, thus far, more tedious than I 
designed, and will therefore hasten, with brevity, in the order I have marked 
out. But before I proceed — as the colonics are clearly cut loose from the 
mother country, and launched into the troubled waters of revolution — let 
me say a parting word or two touching the empire of Great Britain, with 
which venerable and magnificent power many of us arc lineally connected. 
Constrained, by the necessity of civil and religious freedom, to conquer a 
severance of the political bands which bound us together as one nation, we 
may be yet sensible of our vast indebtedness to that indomitable peuple — to 
the splendid examples of prowess, enterprise, learning, eloquence and energy 
whicli they have steadily exhibited throughout many centuries of time, and 
in every distinguished crisis, affecting the riglits of the subject or the true 
grandeur of the realm within its appropriate limits. Proud am I to reflect 
that the Bepublic is a germ of that glorious, time-honored State; and not 
the less a germ because she is destined to overshadow the parent tree, and 
eclipse the ancient edifice in every attribute which renders an empire the 
idol of its citizens, the wonder of posterity, and the favorite sanctuary of 
mankind. The curious may trace the early origin of many of the brightest 
privileges and guaranties whicli have been interwoven in our system of 
government to the broad and beneficent spirit of the English Alfred. The 
spirit of '75 and '-(5, — which had for years glimmered in the breasts of the 
colonists, and which finally o'erleaped all barriers, and burst into a conflagra- 
tion, before which the throne, the royal prerogative and' the kingly diadem 
melted and wasted away, like a snow-flake beneath a sunbeam, — animated 
the stout-hearted Barons at Rnnnymede, and laid the foundation of all those 
rights and imni unities, and of that progre?sive freedom which the body 
of the English people have been in the habit of preserving with so 
much vigilance ever since — thus supplying us with models for some of the 
wisest features in our constitution and laws. The great bulwarks of equal 
and impartial justice, the trial by jury, and the habeas corpus act, so 
necessary to the vitality of liberty, and so precious to the English subject, 
have been borrowed by our form of government and transplanted into a 
republican soil, more congenial to their liberality and equality, where they 
will ever bloom and blossom as the rose, and expand and diffuse their 
ameliorating influence under the careful culture and watchful attention of 
intelligent freemen. With what unspeakable admiration the lover of edu- 
cation and letters in this country must regard the name of Englishmen, 
when he contemplates their immense discoveries, their vast explorations in 
the mystic caverns of science ; and how must his breast swell with gratitude 
and his heart tremble with emotion, wlien he roams at will, ''without money 
and without price," over the classic and illimitable field of English literature, 
literally gorgeous with cloth of gold, folds of silver, with diamonds and 
gems, and jewels, which are the wealth alike of the poor and the rich — a 
banquet whereat tlie reason may feast and the soul become festive. 

We,^ as successors of the colonists, can never forget the eloquent and 
impassioned vindication of the conduct of our forefathei-s, in the Parliament 
of Crc;it Britain, by that noble and accomplished Englishman, Colonel 
Barre, in answer to a maligiuuit assault u|)on their cause by that bitter 
enemy of American freedom, tlie brilliant Charles Townsend. We cannot 
fail to cherish a grateful recollection of the high integrity and humanity of 
General Conway, whose manly voice was often raised against the injustice of 



(25) 

the ministers. In casting our eye over tlie list of men who advocated a 
reformation in the policy of Great Britain towards the colonics, we must 
recognize with emotion the inspiring name of Pitt, the great Commoner, first 
in lustre and in candor amid that constellation of genius, which at that 
period constituted the pride of English statesmanship. It is to old England 
that we are to turn our eyes in grateful acknowledgment for all those and 
numerous other kindred blessings. May she be prosperous and luijipy, and 
speedily become as free as she is great and powerful ! 

This dinrression has severed events which were nearly instantaneous in 
point of time. I, however, make no very great pretensions to chronulngical 
exactitude — nor do I deem it of much importance to be very precise in a hasty 
address such as this. To resume ; — in the year 177G, the world was pre- 
sented with the sublime spectacle of thirteen scattered, oppressed, degraded 
colonies — without wealth, alliance, military supplies, or armed organization, 
declaring, in that imperisliable instrument which was read so imjiressively to 
us to-day, " tliat these United Colonies are, and of i-iglit ought to be, free, 
savereigQ and independent States; that they are absolved from all allegiance 
to the British Crown" — and appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world, 
"witliout whose aid naught luvoly, naught pro[iiti()US comes to pass," for the 
rectitude of their intentions, mutually pledged to each other their lives, their 
fortunes, and their sacred honors — sulennily prepared, "sink or swim, live or 
die, survive or perish," to spend and be spent in the higli and holy cause ol 
liberty. All Europe was struck dumb with amazement by an event so novel, 
an experiment so fraught with ruin to a whole people. Mankind looked at 
Great Bri'aiu in all her gigantic and overwhelming strength — beheld her 
countless population, her inexhaustible resources, her immense military estab- 
lishment, the growth of centuries, and the terror of ihe world, all combined 
with her splendid and invincible navies, which rode the ascendant, in frown- 
ing majesty, on every sea; and then, turning to the other side of the picture, 
contemplated a few scattered, sparsely inhabited colonies, weak, 0])pre5sed, 
without a government, without revenue, without manufactures, without a 
navy, and wholly destitute of the necessary munitions of war, boldly throw- 
ing themselves into the fearful attitude of ri bellion towards their hereditary 
sovereign. Tliey knew not whether to admire, pity, or condemn. They 
stood for a time in speechless wonderment, trembling for the issue. They 
should have reflected, that where the cause is just and the appropriate means 
applied, "there is a Divinity which shapes our ends, rough hew them as we 
may." At this most inti^'esting period in our early history, the balance of 
the civiliz 'd world enjoyed an almost unbroken exemption from the terrors 
of war. Wrapt in the silken folds, and inhaling the mellow atmosphere of 
prosperity within and peace without, they neither felt nor saw the anguish, 
the privation, the death, the devastited homes and the desolated hearths of 
the devoted colonists. We are struck by the contrast! A short space of 
tim°, however, sufiieed to reverse the picture, and transfer the scene of 
desolation and slaugliter from America to Europe. Mutability has, through- 
out all ages past, " like a worm i' the bud," preyed upon the prdudest mas- 
terpieces of the energy and genius of man, and steadily taught him that the 
devices of his mind and the works of his hand are distinguished or disgraced 
by but two events — their production and their extinction — ere their history 
is complete The lover, the philosopher, the warrior, the statesman, and the 
man of acres and of gold — each in his time, in some form or other, has be- 
h'ld the object of his idolatry or his ambition wither and decay under the 



(2G) 

poisoticrl tooth or the deceitful changes of time, and a dim and desolate void 
mark the place where the liighost hope once smiled and wooed him on. There 
is, alls! too much truth in the touchin^^ 'plaint of the intcnsest of English 
poets — 

"OliI upon time! it will leave no more 

Of the tilings to come tiian the tilings beforel 

Ont u|)on time! who forever will leave 

lint eiiougli of the past for the future to grieve, 

O'er that which hath been, and o'er that wliich must be: 

^Vi|,■lt we have seen, our sons shall see; 

Remnants of things that have pass'd away, 

fragments of stone, rearVi by creatures of clayl" 

Men and time wage a perpetual war with each other — and he who, with a 
generous purpose, struggles manfully and bold, has his good deeds echoed 
and re-echoed along the plane of descending time, to the very verge of eter- 
]iity ! May our beloved country profit by the moral of the past, and stand 
out, in the desert waste of centuries yet to come, the nearest approach to 
luimau stability and human perfectiun allottt d to the career on earth of the 
children of Adam ! 

It was the design of Groat Britain to paralyze the colonies by one sum- 
nnry and terrible blow; with that view, she concentrated a large and select 
army in and near Boston, and stationed in the harbor commanding the adja^ 
cent hights, with their guns, a large fleet to aid and co-operate with the 
land force. The Americans, eager for the commencement of the strife, pro- 
ceeded by order of General Putnam, under the immediate command of that 
invincible soldier, Cul. Prescott, to occupy the hight called Bunker Hill; 
they, however, tlirough mistake, threw up their redoubts on Breeds Hill. 
Fancy that little band of freedom's earliest martyrs, in the drad of night, 
on the memorable lOth of June, shrouded in the thick gloom of dark'.iess, 
wending their perilous way to thw post of danger, hurrying like that laureled 
company of Spartans, under Leonidas, to the pass of Thermopohx', to inter- 
pose their breas's as a good shield between their country and her invaders. 
See them toiling slionlder to slioulder, man and officer, throwing up their re- 
doubts and constructing their entrenchments, not to screen them from danger, 
but to screen from the foeman ilie fewness of their numbers and the scanti- 
ness of tlicir ammunition. Behold them at the dawn of day, every man re- 
suming his appointed place — witness the warm grasp of the hand, the 
manly embrace, the firm tread, and the unquailing eye of those iron souls 
dcdicatel to Liberty. I know not tlnit ancient Greece, in her gallant and 
renowned resistance of the Persian hordes, presented a spectacle of such 
tln-illing interest, of such higli, immaculate devotion to country! Eapidly 
reviewing the past, and contrasting it wiMi the future which they prophetic- 
ally scanni'd, sobered but not appalled by the fearful odds against them, and 
duly estimating the force, in nil time to come, of heroic example, they sol- 
emnly renounced the charms of life, and nobly laying aside the habiliments 
of human infirmity, offered tliemselves a willing sacrifice upon the altar of 
libertv, for the redemption of posterity from the execrable bomls of tyranny. 
T sliall not attempt a descrijition of the terrific engagement which ensued — 
it cannot be described It constitutes one of those grand moral phenomena 
which mark epochs in t\v flight of centuries and the progress of man, and 
stand out above and beyoml whatever the mind may comproliend or the 
tongite portray. Suffice it to say, that when, in the morning, the British 
arm}-, glittering in its fine appointments and burnished armor, and fortified 



(27) 

by its terrible cannon, had tlie hardihood to approach those niglit-louilt re- 
doubts, it was swept away file after file and column after column, until the 
hill-sidg ran with the invaders' blood, and the mission for which the liule 
band of patriots was sent was gloriously fulfilled — a mission sealed and 
sanctioned by the life and blood of the amiable and high-toned Warren, of 
whom his country cherished the fnndest hopes, and upon whose stout heart 
and enlightened head she placed the most distinguished reliance. 

The bittle of Bunker Hill accomplished more for the Eepublic, perhaps, 
if we consider its moral effects, than any other single event during the revo- 
lutionary war. It, in the first place, demonstrated to the world that the 
American people were solemnly in earnest — that they had heads to conceive, 
hearts to resolve, and hands to execute whatever became them in the emergency 
which they had sought. It further demonstrated that every man in x\nieriea 
had prepared his mind for absolute martyrdom. It clearly showed that the 
American soldier was a match for the disciplined veteran who had grown up 
in camps. It amazed and terrified the British Ministry. It won friends, 
and elicited sympathy and admiration in every part of Europe. And in our 
own land it settled the issue distinctively, animated the lukewarm, encour- 
aged the ardent, stimulated that glorious bind of sentinels on the outward 
wall of liberty — the Con2:ress of the Union — and roused every element of 
heroism and every chord of resistance and eff'ort throughout the country. 
From that time the work went bravely on through every variety and shade 
of fortune. There was no more looking back — no pausing to count the cost 
or meisure the peril — they had placed their feet upon the plough-share, and 
they marched steadily through the fiery ordeal. 

The history of the times teems with instances of bravery, self-sacrifice, 
noble daring, and patient endurance in every stage of the protracted strug- 
gle, any of which would successfully vie with the brightest specimens of 
heroism celebrated in poetry and in song. The name of Jasper will glow 
along side of those of the most conspicuous heroes of antiquity. AVhen the 
British fleet, under the command of General Clinton, attacked the fort on 
Sullivan's Island, commanded by Moultrie, the gallant Moultrie of South 
Carolina, and poured into the little fortification such a terrible and incessant 
fire of artillery as to riddle it from top to bottom, they succeeded finally in 
shooting down the Moultrie flas-, which fell outside the works. The British 
seamen were overjoyed, and raised a shout of triumph. But ere their exulta- 
tion ceased, they beheld, with involuntary admiration, a gallant figure, right 
in the teeth of their guns, recover and replace that glorious flag, and plant it 
with a strong hand firmly upon the summit of the works. That figure wns 
Sergeant Jaspers, who, lifted by his patriotic and chivalrous soul above all 
sense of selfish danger, and maddened by the fall of the colors upon which 
his heart was fixed, had leaped in the face of a murderous fire of cannon 
outside the walls, rescued the flag, and borne it in triumph to the most con- 
spicuous place, where it flaunted in the breeze while the proud fleet of the 
enemy was cut to pieces, burned, or dispersed. But it would weary us both, 
fellow citizens, were I to mention one out of ten thousand eminent displays 
of heroic daring, glowing upon each page of our history — I shall, therefore, 
hasten forward through this division of my subject, so familiar to ever}- mind. 

Towards the close of the year 1776, the nec^ ssities of the American army 
became so distressing, the privation and suff"ering so full of evil tendencies, 
and the embarrassments of Congress so ominous of ruin to the popular cause, 
that with all General Washington's admirable address and untiring energy, 



(28) 

it was scarcely possible to keep a handful of men together. Having a large 
extent of open country to protect, with no adequate means to cliock the 
ravages of an enterprising enemy — expected to achieve brilliant victories 
with a little compnny of meagre, half-famished, ill-appointed and ragged 
soldiery, and a splendid army of foity or fifty thousand men, under accom- 
plisheil o; nerals, to hold at bay — that singular man liad occasion for the 
constant exercise of all those rare endowments which have made him stand 
out so conspicuously beyond any man known to fame. One of the most con- 
clusive evidences given by him, throughout his eventful career, of his pre- 
eminent fitness fur the station to which he had been called, was exhibited in 
his conduct, about this time, during the most critical condition of the army 
under his command on Long Island. Upon that trying occasion, when ruin 
stared him in the face, arul a single moment's indeci.^ion or one false step 
would hive planj;ed his country into hopeless despair, cool, self-possessed, 
prompt, and undismayed, he dispersed the difficulties which beset him on all 
sides, as a giant would put aside thi' puny arm of a child. It is no dispar- 
agement to the true revolutionary patriot to say, that at this juncture the 
cause languished on many sides, the lukewarm dropped oif — for there have 
been, and there will be again, men who are but as dust in the balance, say- 
ing they know not what, and acting they know not wherefore — the favorites 
of echo, the playthings of chance, the apes or the tools of the gifted or the 
strong. The resources of Congress, it would seem, totally failed — the army 
grew less and less, until but a few hundreds, all told, mustered under the 
banner of the patriot chief. It was then that the great soul of Washington 
was wrung with anguish by the fearful jeopardy of his country, and that ho 
groaned from the depths of his sorrow, when he, on the one side, contemplated 
the ignominy and slavery of failure, and, on the other, the glorious results he 
could bring Jibout if rightly sustained. It was at this time that he is said to 
have oxchiinie i, in a moni' nt of impassioned grief, to an ofiicer of his staff, 
'•Whither shall we go? " It wis then that he rt solved, in the worst event, 
to gather his countrymen around him, and flying to his native mountains in 
Virginia, and fortifying himself in the recesses of the forest, amidst the im- 
penetrable! barriers of the Alloghanies, where no navy could ride and no 
artillery do exi'cution, from thence to carry on a prt datory warfare and accu- 
mulate hi.< forces until time and events should enable him to take the field 
again under more favorable auspices. Happily for the cause of human lib- 
erty, he was not driven to that extremity ; but the record of his heroic inten- 
tions serves to show of what mettle the head of the army was composed. 
What is it that a faithful people might not accomplish with such a man to 
direct their energies and guide their councils ! 

At lengOi, after a period of darkness, during which the clouds hung thick- 
est aiul blackest over the land, a single ray of light illumined the awful 
prosp' ct ahead. The army of Washington met with a sligiit augmentation, 
and he determined at once to take advantage of the circumstance, to strike 
a suC'-essful blow for the encouragement of his drooping countrymen. 
Though luiable to appear in the field against the enemy for months past, he 
watched their every motion, ascertained the number and disposition of their 
forces, and scrutinized their most secret plans. He discovered that the 
enmiy, in extending his line unadvisedly for several miles along the Dela- 
ware, and thence to Brunswick, presented some assailable points to a vigi- 
lant and prompt attack. Quick as lightning he formed his plans and took 
up his march. "Now," says he, "now is the time to clip thi ir wings, while 



(29) 

they are so spread." He inade a brilliant demonstration against Trenton, 
captured a large force and a lirge amount of valuable ;ini)nuniii(in and stores, 
and completely restored the public spirits to the highest hope and to renewed 
exertion. 

Impressed with awe and penetrated with admiration b}' thi^ tvanscendant 
prudence, foresight and ahibty of their General, and sensible of the superior 
efficiency of a single governing will in times of great peril, the Congress, then 
in session at Baltimore, gave to Washington the powerful temptation of un- 
limited authority in everything concerning the management of the war. It 
was his peculiar glory and the nation's enduring hap.piness, that he acted, 
whilst holding the identical means wherewith he might have sunken his coun- 
try in his own aggrandizement, as he alu ays acted in every phase of his splen- 
did career, using and valuing power no longer than it enabled him to exalt 
and ameliorate the condition and happiness of the people whom he passion- 
ately yearned to make free and glorious. 

On the 11th September, '77, we see the unconquerable American com- 
mander grappling with the British Lion in the hot and disastrous battle of 
Brandywine. Overwhelmed with numbers, and surrounded with every ad- 
verse circumstance, we behold him maintain, neverthi less, the same marble 
front, the same majestic presence, the same consummate skill upon which his 
army so fondly and so justly relied, and whereby he so often converted utter 
defeat into consequential victory. It was in t1iis engagement that the 
gallant Count Pulaski, the heroic son of a country known equally to the 
highest renown and to the deepest wretchedness, did for Liberty in America 
that which he fain would have done for her on the soil which bore him. 
Sunken in wo, in vassalage and in waste, her very vitals devoured by the 
myrmidons of an insatiable despot, the desolation of his country was his 
daily and nightly torture. Sternly, but with biting agony, he bade adieu to 
Poland, and fled to the battle fields of America, for that repose and for that 
honor which he sought in vain in Europe. This intrepid Pule was the flower 
of our light-horse ; his charge was as a sudden avalanche rushing from 
mountain peak, and with wild, terrific power, uprooting and obliterating each 
opposing obstacle. At the battle of Brandywine he carried death and con- 
fusion into every part of the enemy's ranks where he appeared — broke and 
routed their compact infantry, and bore himself throughout that trying scene 
with the lofty port of a proud and dauntless Christian warrior. 

You will excuse me for calling your attention to another stranger, perhaps, 
if not better, more widely known to fime. A youthful people struggling for 
liberty in opposition to an overwhelming Power, presented a spectacle which 
was calculated to awaken sympathy. It is, indeed, not at all surprising that 
generous spirits, unhappy at home, destitute of any legitimate sphere for the 
display of their capabilities, without any of the advantages of powerful con- 
nexion, wealth, official dignity, or of equality of rights and privileges, should 
have fled elsewhere to seek honor and competence in a noble enterprise. 
But what are we to think of a man whom heaven and earth seemed to have 
chosen as their prime favorite, and to have lavishly endowed with every addition 
requisite to make life triumphantly splendid, poweiful and happy — who, in 
the very morning and blossom of exp:!nding manhood, dedicated himself to 
the service of a few miserable colonies, situate in the wilds of a distant 
hemisphere, and engaged in a fierce and deadly strife with an omnipotent 
king and empire against whom they liad boldly rebelled? Thus charac- 
terized and actuated was the Marquis Be Lafayette ! a man of princely 



(30) 

descent — tlio flower of tlio Frencli nobility — immensely licli — liigli in honor, 
and in influence with the reigning dynasty, with nothing under heaven to do 
hut to live in luxury and in lordly grandeur, — suddenly rejected the yet un- 
familiar caresses of a young and beautiful bride ; tore himself from all the 
grand allurements whicli waited on and adurncd his station ; turned his back 
upon the glare and pomp of courts, and defying the perils of the ocean, and 
plunging into the vurtex of the revolution in its darkest hour, shared with 
our fathers their fortunes, their toils, their midnight marches, the heady 
fiu'lit, the shout of victory and the sting of defeat. At Erandywine he was 
the glory of the field. Wounded and bleeding, but still panting for the 
strife, he was forcibly led from the slaughter. Bis mortal remains sleep 
beneath the soil of his native France; but his virtues survive, and will ever 
survive, in the emulative soul of every true man. Posterity has embalmed 
liis memory, and recording history will perpetuate his glorious deeds to the 
latest generation of man. 

However natural and interesting it is to notice such instances upon an 
occasion such as the present, 1 find the length of time it would require to 
five but a few of tlicm but a passing glance, would greatly exceed your 
patience. I must, therefore, hasten over the dreadful note and preparation 
of war, the shock of battle, and the ensanguined field, and bring you, as 
rapidly as possible, to tlie closing scene. Wo cannot tarry to drop a tear 
over the unhappy cor.dition of Freedom's martyrs, in their gloomy and 
forlorn winter quarters at A-^alley Forge — scarcely less horrible in contem- 
plation than the appalling Black Hole of Calcutta ! We cannot delay to 
pursue the tedious detail of the negotiations of Congress with France for 
aid and alliance, their ultimate success, nor dwell upon the joy of our heroic 
fathers when they beheld, standing ofi' the coast, the streaming pennon and 
broad canvass of the French fleet, under the Count B'Estang, prepared to 
co-operate with our army. 

In every period of the struggle v,'hon our cause appeared most deplorable, 
the subtle enemy failed not to exert secret and open means to corrupt and 
seduce our soldiers from their good faith and high calling. To the ever- 
lasting glory of that incorruptible race of men be it said, that they, to a 
man — with but one single exception — spat upon the tempter, and hooted 
him and his bribes out of their presence. The poorest man in the American 
camp, saving that single cancerous exceptio-//, nursed in his bosom that proud 
■intocrity wliich animated the gallant Col. Keed, when he declared to an 
emissary of Gov. Johnson's — "1 am not worth purchasing; but such as I 
am, the King of England is not ricli enough to buy me." That single ex- 
ception, like a dark blot upon the disc of the sun, lived long to witness the 
country he had l:)etrayed, triumphant — the men with whom he had done 
battle, before the devil suborned him, covered with honor — and to feel that 
lie was the scorn and detestation of all -mankind. He lived a walking Pan- 
demonium ; he died a loathed and self-loathing wretch ! Honor and fair 
renown wooed him as never man was wooed ; and he leaped into the stag- 
nant lake of infamy, to escape the fond caresses of vestal fame. There let 
his memory welter and rot forever. Such is the righteous doom of every traitor ! 

Compelled, as I above stated, to overlook almost all the interesting events 
of the military operations of the period, wo cannot even stop to droj) a word 
and a tear of sympathy with the gallant Col Tarleton, who, in prudenlly re- 
ceding from the glorious Battle of the Cowpons, was made the victim of a 
flagrant a'^saull and ballcry, with force and ar?ns, by one Col. Washington, 



(31) 

whereby the said Tarleton was bruised, beaten and n3aimed, and otherwise 
injured, to the extent and damage of the entire kss of tlie wbulc or an im- 
portant part of his left ear, so that the tqiniihrivnn of his head was seriously 
disturbed and his nervous system made forever afterwards painfully sensitive 
to the mention of the name of the gentleman who galloped behind him upun 
that exciliiig occasion. 

We cannot even stop to exult over the bright halo which again encircled 
the American arms, and the shouts of victory which rose from the brillian 
event at Eutaw Springs, in South Carolina, under the brave and unrivalled 
Green, where the noble and intrepid Col. Campbell, the gallant Watts, and 
the young and chivalric Stewart, closed their expiring eyes on the retreating 
enemy ; but must hasten on to the development of a grand system of com- 
bined operations on the part of Washington and the Count De Grasse, which 
finally exhibited itself in the difficult and memorable seige and surrender of 
Cornwailis and his proud army at Yorktown, to the soldiers of the Republic. 
After several days of severe lighting, in which the American arms were uni- 
formly successful — after the two commanders had disj layed the highest mili- 
tary skill; the one in suraiounting the stupendous works which the British 
were protected by; the other in vainly attempting to resist the masterlv 
judgment and consummate management of the successive attacks — the Brit- 
ish Lion, writhing, powerless, in the talons of the American Eagle, submitted 
to bo quietly caged and sent back whence he came. The British flai', which 
had ridden invincible in every sea and proudly waved triumphant in every 
land where it had been unfurled, trailed the dust beneath the young flag of 
freedom flaunting in the breeze. And the titled representative of royalt}- — 
the head and front of the great army of the British empire — was seen meekly 
surrendering his sword, and an army and navy of from .^even to ten thousand 
men, arms, ammunition and equipage, to the rebel chief, the public servant 
of those thirteen oppressed, scattered, ])ennyless, unfriended colonies of 
whom it was said by Lord North, only a few years before, that they must be 
"whipped into submission." 

It is impossible to conceive the joy which this glorious event elicited eve- 
rywhere, from the center to the extremities of the land. Every ingenious 
device which could possibly be made expressive of the public felicity was 
resorted to, and paraded and proclaimed far and wide. I'he night time, and 
the thick gloom, and the funeral pall and the woe and wailing which had. 
brooded over their country and wrung their hearts for a grievous period, had 
been finally dispersed and obliterated, and the soft sunshine of peace, with 
all her smiling train, and the Ijland gales of prosperity, streamed in upon 
them as day succeeds night, and as the golden harvest and the scented rose 
succeed the wintry blast and the chilling snow. 'Tis no wonder they rent 
the welkin with their shouts, and made space and air vocal with the echo of 
their huzzas. It constituted an eminent epoch in the history of the world. 
Three millions of people had, "spurning the gross control of willful might," 
stricken off their chains, and assumed a "local habitation and a name'' 
among the nations of the earth. 

The surrender of Yorktown was the last grand act of the militarv drama. 
The utter fallacy of longer persisting in the hopeless effort to regain the 
colonies and bring the people back to bondage, was too powerfully illustrated 
by that crowning event to admit of further doubt in the minds of even the 
dominant ministi-y in England. And that Power was forced to treat upon 
terms of perfect equality with that man from whom it refused to accept an 



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humble petition of the colonics when he was a dutiful subject. " The last 
was made fii-jt. and the first iast: Old things had passed away, and all things 
became now ! The P^tliiopian had changed his skin, and the Jjcopard his spots, 
and the Lion was glad to lie down with the Lamb." The warning voices of 
Barre, of Conway, and of Chatham, were at last understood and apprci'iated; 
but the despot's knell, "'tis too late," "'tis too late," demonstrated that the 
past was irrevocable. 

The haughty and baffled ministry were compelled to acknowledge the entire 
freedom, sovereignty and independence of the colonies. The humiliated kicg 
was constrained by a necessity which he dared no longer resist, to place his 
reluct mt signature to that instrument which formally detached from his 
crown the brightest and the fairest empire th;it ever adorned the page of his- 
tory, or gave lustre and puis.Bance to an earthly sceptre. All the Powers of 
Europe speedily recognized the government of the United States of America, 
and entered into alliances therewith. And thus the ship of state was 
launched upon the waves of time. 

The glorious sages and patriots who had stood at the helm of the old 
revolutionary vessel throughout the long and terrific gale by which she was 
constantly encompassed, now set about the more difficult, if less dangerous 
undertaking, of forming a grand system of equal republican laws and rights, 
adapted to the nature and requirements of that and comiTig times, and of 
sufficient strength, complicity and reach of view to stand the test of all time 
and endure forever, the certain, efficient guarantee of liberty, property, and 
the pursuit of happiness. Here we bid adieu to the revolution, at its final 
determiiiatiun. 

We have now, follow citizens, finished, in a very desultory manner, the 
first two heads of the order marked out in the beginning of this address, 
namely, — the origin, the progress and termination of the revolution.^ Slightly 
as I have touched upon these interesting topics, I have spun out a badly told 
tale to a length whicli I had not anticipated. The single remaining head, 
though not inferior in interest, I shall treat with brevity. 

The triumphant termination of the struggle with England left the States, 
'tis true, torn, and wasted, and ensanguined with the blood of many of their 
best citizens — their meagre agriculture almost annihilated, together with the 
complete obliteration of every vestige of trade of the least importance; and, 
in addition to all that, saddled upon them hu enoimous debt of forty-two 
millions of dollars; — but, on the other hand, it left them in the full and 
acknowledged possession of their unquestionable liberty, of their future des- 
tiny, and at peace with all the powers of the world. The colonists then 
discovered themselves in a new, untried and exceedingly momentous position I 
They had fought hard and long, amid cannon and carnage, for liberty! 
They had achieved it; and now to preserve a wise distinction between the 
use and the abuse of it, was the engrossing problem ! They possessed an 
absolute discretion as to the government they should form. They no longer 
had a Parliament or King to thwart them. Any system which commended 
itself might be adopted, subject only to the will of a newly enfranchised 
people. Though the States were intimately connected by having jointly 
resisted oppression, by having achieved a common independence, by common 
interests, by intermarriage, by contiguity, by a partnership indebtedness, 
and otherwise — yet each and every one of them was totally distinct and 
isolated in point of jurisdiction and sovereignty. It was optional with them, 
on the one hand, to remain in slatu quo, and communicate with each other 



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as with other nations, by treaties and according to the usages and custorns ot' 
nations of •widely diversified interests and latitudes; or, on the other hand, 
to confederate — as everything enjoined they should — erect asujiremc central 
authority, endowed with a magnificent supreme Judiciary, and with other 
requisite powers, to bring about an identity of interest, a uniformity of laws, 
an equal justice, a cheerful subordination, an irresistible vigor, power and 
grandeur, which would forever cement together the revolving State govern- 
ments, and make them and the whole people happy and opulent at home, 
feared and respected abroad, wise in council, terrible in battle, glorious and 
indiv-isible through all time to come. Or, in fine, they might, in imitation of 
the noted States of ancient Greece, and the petty Independences of Holland 
in more modern times, retain their insulated positions and pursue a line of 
policy peculiar to each other, eschewing all confederated association, and 
recognizing no common ties or interests save those incident to an indifferent 
intercommunication and amity in times of peace and concord. The melan- 
choly weakness, distraction, jealousy, mutual aggression, and the final anni- 
hilation of the once heroic Grecian States, from causes manifestly inherent 
in their division, and their constant bickerings and petty dissensions, admon- 
ished our Fathei's of the extreme impolicy of imitating such a deplorable 
example and bringing: upon their beloved country such a disastrous train of 
evils and such an inglorious destiny. The feeble and unhappy condition of 
the pseudo-independences in Holland, then fresh in the minds of men, duped, 
tantalized and oppressed by the surrounding despotisms of which they were 
the common and unpitied prey, held out no attraction to the hardy and high- 
minded republicans on this side of the water, to copy their flimsy, imbecile 
and inefhcient institutions. It did not require a very protracted deliberation 
upon the part of the peojde, taught, as they had been, by their trying expe- 
rience in the troubled scenes from which they were just emerged, the irre- 
sistible power and splendid consequences of union to enable them to decide 
that their best interests, and their urgent necessities, and tlieir existence and 
perpetuity as a nation, demanded one competent Federal Head — " the sheet 
anchor of peace at home and safety abroad'' — with general powers binding- 
over all and each equally and supremely. 

A series of articles of confederation, of mutual obligations and trusts, 
adopted by most of the colonies, at the instance of Congress, in 1777, and 
which in some manner supplied the purposes of government during the con- 
tinuance of the revolutionary struggle, were now ratified by all the States. 
These articles authorized a general Congress to be cora])osed of representa- 
tives from each State, and vested therein certain vague legislative powers — 
but, as was subsequently proved, neglected to provide any adequate executive 
and coercive authority applicable in case its action should be despised or 
evaded by the insubordination of any member of the confederation — further 
than that it was likewise destitute of a supreme Judiciary, the great pre- 
essential to every salutary system of government— and wholly without the 
requisite functions to raise the money wherewith to defray|its own expenses. 
These were cardinal defects which would have inevitably led to ruin and 
anarchy. The unhappy defects of that instrument have become matter of 
history, and may be flippantly commented upon by those so disposed. It 
would be extravagantly erroneous to suppose that its defects escaped the 
sagacious intellects who witnessed its formation. It served an immediate 
purpose, and our ancestors achieved liberty under it. Its imperfections were 
foreseen and tolerated only as the least of the evils, in consequence of tho 
necessities of the period, pregnant with every difficulty and disqualification 



(34) 

which utter poverty, immense debt, ruiaed credit, popular confusion, increas- 
iuf discontent, and the thousand obstacles and evils which sinister and cor- 
rupt men arc always prompt to devise and throw in the way of any enter- 
prise, which, requiring the signal display of virtue and ability, may reflect 
clory upon the agents and happiness upon mankind. The enemies of the 
country and of freedom seized the present deplorable condition of things to 
distract and vitiate public sentiment, and inspire distrust of public men who 
had fiven proofs, time and again, of the first order of capacity and of the 
highest devotion to liberty. Emissaries from high places abroad were busy 
in fomenting all kinds of resistance to Congress, in the hope of plunging the 
States into anarchy, and thereby subject them again to despotic misrule. 
There were, too, men deluded enough or base enough, at that time, while yet 
the wounds of the revolutionary heroes were bleeding, and while yet the 
mournin^'- tear glistened upon the pallid cheek of the revolutionai-y widow, to 
speak openly of returning to a monarchical form of government, and relin- 
quish all the blood-bought glories of the struggle to rend the chains of op- 
pression and bask in the sunshine and repose in the shade of civil and reh- 
gious freedom. It does seem to me that if that infamous proposition had 
met with one approving smile from any respectable number of the people, and 
the fiery wrath of an indignant Heaven had not burst from the clouds, as in 
the case of Nadab and Abihu, and consumed the recreants to ashes, the 
myriad glorified martyrs who perished in the cause of American liberty would 
themselves have burst their cerements, and, with their gory locks and skin- 
less bones, have driven their degenerate successors from the soil they would 
thus have desecrated. 

The imminent peril and abundant wretchedness of his country reached 
the car of the venerated Washington in his tranquil retreat at Mount Ver- 
non, and struck a pang within him which made his great heart bleed as in 
the darkest hour of the revolution. He saw that his countrj-men were in 
danger of giving way and lending themselves to low delusions and base uses 
at the very time when the golden promise w-as about being realized. To add 
to tlie dangers and difficulties with which the States were at this time envi- 
roned, the terms of the treaty with Great Britain were in some respects 
willfully violated by a party in the country, who, in defiance of all law, advo- 
cated the total repudiation of all the obligations which the States were under, 
whether by debt, or contract, or otherwise. The requisitions of Congress 
were despised, and the credit and securities of the States were left to sufi'cr, 
in the estimation of the world, the consequences of the bad faith of an un- 
grateful or a misjudging people. History bears testimony, however, that in 
this deplorable period, although the public mind was distracted and dismayed, 
the great body of the American people were pure and ardent in their patriot- 
ism, and eager for good government upon the principles of equal rights and 
a just and full compliance with all the obligations which circumstances had 
constrained them to enter into in the progress and exigences of the revolu- 
tion. All the disafi'ection and all the disregard of solemn trusts which pre- 
vailed, were the unhappy eiFects of factitious causes wdierewith the people 
were enticed and deceived. 

That state of things could not long exist without anarchy and bloodshed. 
Now, if evej", the question was to be decided — Is man capable of self-govern- 
ment? It was not only a question involving the liberties of the people of 
the North American continent — it was a crisis wherein rested the freedom 
and happiness of nations yet unborn : it was a final struggle between the 
relative superiority of a governiucnt Ity one man, or a government by many 



(35) 

men. The friends of monareliy tliroughout the world waited with hopeful 
impatience to behold the temple of liberty and equal rights, reared out of 
the trophies of the revolution, crumble beneath its own weight and sink into 
perpetual oblivion. They exulted in the prospect — and even commenced 
disposing of this magnificent territory among the various Povvers whom their 
freakish fancy prefigured assuming possession of the crushed and ruined 
States and spiritless people ! They prated flippantly of all similar govern- 
ments in the past — they pronounced turgid speeches upon the disastrous des- 
tiny of ancient republics — they moralized upon the wretchedness of resisting 
the Divine right of kings, and hooted at the futility of self-government. 
They were wont, in their fancied triumph, to regard our Washington, our 
Henry, our Adams, and our Jeiferson, as violent, desperate, sanguinary men, 
foes to peace and enemies to m^mkind, as the bane of legitimate government 
and fit only for the galleys and the scaffold. Many such false prophets and 
many such self-deluded men have floated up upon the surface of human affairs 
in all ages of the progress of man ! " The earth hath its bubbles as the 
water hath, and these arc of them ! " Those men and their idle vagaries 
have long since, with characteristic insignificance, 

" Gone, glimmering through a dream of things tliat were 
A school-boy's tale, the wonder of aa hour." 

But the temple of liberty they assailed, and the builders and makers thereof, 
planted in the wide ocean of time and " firmly balanced on the base of their 
own eternity," will endure till time, and sense, and eartli, and air, the teem- 
ing globe, the boundless universe and 

"AH its orbs and all its worlds of fire 
Be loosened frona their seats." 

John Adams was in France, in an official capacity, at this period of his 
country's domestic troubles. He had a painful opportunity of watching the 
decline of his country in the opinion of the European nations. He was 
therefore impressed — calmly contemplating, as he did, the position of his 
country as from an elevated platform, commanding a view of the whole pros- 
pect — with the cardinal importance of forming a more perfect union, of re- 
vising the articles of confederation, of amplifying their powers, of knitting 
the States together by the strong sinews of a supreme national government, 
and of investing it with pre-eminent specific powers, to be strengthened and 
upheld by a resolute Executive branch and an independent Judiciary, to the 
end that order and prosperity at home and respect and confidence abroad 
might be permanently secured. Always most eminent when the emergency 
was greatest, that vigilant patriot urged his views upon his friends in the 
States so successfully, that in May, 1787, a Convention of Delegates met, 
with Washington at its head, and devised and adopted, after a thrilling ses- 
sion, the present glorious Constitution under which we live, and move, and 
have our being. It was speedily submitted to the people, and after calm 
deliberation and searching analysis in primary assemblies and representative 
convejitions, as calmly and deliberately ratified and confirmed. 

The members of that Convention, the ever-honored framers of the Con- 
stitution, may look down from their homes in Heaven, with a celestial com- 
placency, upon the fruits of their wisdom, upon the immensity of their bene- 
faction. Posterity through all coming time may be considered their consti- 
tuency — and we can imagine the glad acclamations of millions upon millions, 
as centuries, and states, and empires revolve, echoing and re-echoing, " Well 
done, thou good and faithful servants." With a benio-nitv imitating that so 



pre-eminently displayed by the God of the flying and homeless Israelites, the 
Fathers oi" tlio Constitution have given to mankind that which will serv(i 
forever as a pillar of cloud by day and a pillar of fire by night, to guide this 
chosen people. We have reached the Land they promised, and have fed upon 
the fatness of the vine and the lig-tree. The Fathers of the lievolution 
fought the good fight, they finished their course, and, passing into eternity 
and into the possession of an inheritance exempted from every contingency 
whatever, bequeathed their example and iheir achievements to the race they 
elevated, ennobled and made free and great. Basking in the mellow sun- 
shine of cloudless prosperity, and in the daily fruition of the liberties and 
privileges of the Constitution, wo arc, alas ! too apt to neglect the memory 
of tlie wise and brave who sleep the sleep of the Martyr and the Patriot. 

It will not be expected that a plain young man of my age and experience 
should ofler to an enlightened public, upon an occasion like this, his necessa- 
rily crude views of the nature and operation of that learned and consummate 
instrument, the Constitution of tlie United States. As great men had, there- 
tofore, been scattered along the declivity of time, only at wide intervals, usually 
with the intervention of centuries between, it would have been reasonable to 
conclude, that, in view of the multitude produced by the infant Republic, in 
lier struggle for existence, a long, very long time must elapse ere she could 
hope again to add still brighter ornaments to the human race in the person 
of her sons. But in her Madison, and her Marshall, and her Story, and her 
Kent, the illustrious Apostles of the Constitution, she has outstripped all 
competition and bid defiance to parallel! The memory of those great men 
teaches mo, therefore, to approach the sacred confin' s of tlie Constitution 
with the awe, and devotion, and meekness of an eastern idolatry. I would 
not defile it with one rude touch, iior oifend it with one word of levity : 1 
regard it as the palladium of my country, and with it, it soems to me, the 
Republic is indeed destined to sink or swim. Take it from us — dot but an 
■i, or cross but a /, contrary to the spirit it In'cathcs, and, like the bird 
which flew from Noah's ark, our liberties will tlien have gone, to return no 
more forever, and we have become a by-word and a scoff" for every jeering 
monarchist who glitters in the costly trappings extorted from oppressed 
mankind. 

More than half a century, chequered by every variety and form of vicissi- 
tude, has elapsed since the Constitution of this Union became the supreme 
law of the llopublic. AVe have seen what was the condition of the States 
when it was interposed to avert impending ruin. It had no artificial or pow- 
erful aids to enforce its observance or ensure its permanency. It was no 
code of laws compiled by tlie order and ostentatiously promulgcd at the will 
of a magnificent Despot and an invincible Conqueror. It was not addressed to 
a trammelled, man-worslii))ping, slavish people, and pronounced good because 
the edict of insurmountable power! It had to encounter the severe scrutiny 
of jealous Freemen, and stand upon its own intrinsical merit. How nobly 
has it done its mighty task thus far ! It assumed its proud position, unaided 
and unenjoined — the embodiment of civil liberty and private rights— »amid 
the wreck and confusion of the revolution, tlie strife of clashing interests, 
the storms of faction, the whirlwind of discord, and the insidious wiles of in- 
trigue. ])itfu.sing itself throughout the land, upon the great principle that 
the "greatest good belongs to the greatest number," it rebuked the malice 
of the invidious, chastened tiie folly of the perverse, and became the watch- 
word and the creed alike of its assailants and its advocates. It has never 
for one instant wearied in well doing, or faultered of inefficiency. It has 



(37) 

within it an expansive power, a creative energ}-, a political ubiquity, and a 
reforming and progressive genius, which no extent of area can embarrass, no 
responsibility dismay, no time or place surprise, and no successes or under- 
takings surfeit or appal. Looked at in its relations, it is the most wonderful 
instrument of political unity and po'.ver in the universal world. It is the 
concentrated voice, sentiment, will, intelligence and power of twenty-four 
millions high-hearted, harmonious freemen ! No sooner was its felicitous, 
steadfast and informing influence operated in contrast with the imbecility of 
the system it supplanted, than all signs of domestic rancor, insurrection and 
insecurity vanished, to give place to the rapidly developing power and gran- 
deur of the Republic. Every department of industrial effort sprang into 
unparalleled activity, encouraged by a system of government so free, so 
equitable, so steady, and so commanding. The authority and character of 
the new government rose at once to that of nations of the first rank. All 
obligations were discharged, and all old scores, contracted when buffeted by 
the waves of ruin and shame, honorably cancelled. American enterprise, 
now that it was unshackled and at liberty to indulge its impulses and its 
speculations, climbed the mountains, searched the valleys, traced the rivers, 
explored the coasts, and traversed the lakes, from which they had hitherto 
been excluded, or of which they had remained in comparative ignorance, 
owing to the pains and disabilities of tyranny. The hunting grounds 'of a 
brave, sometimes generous, but benighted and incorrigible race of Barbarians, 
over which they had roamed for untold ages in savage and sanguinary ma- 
jesty, were moulded into court-houses, commercial depots, and colleges, and 
their battle-fields made redolent with the sweets of bounteous harvest. 
Million after million of energetic spirits swelled the gathering hosts of 
aspiring freemen. State after State sprang into being, and thousands and 
millions of acres added, told the progress of empire. Almost annually the 
political firmament of the young Republic furnished for the reflection and 
study of the scientific, new stars of the first magnitude, each supreme in its 
orbit, and all conducive to the glory and eternity of the great central Iitjni- 
nary. 

Thirteen tottering and desolate colonies, lying near the Atlantic coast, 
down-trodden and despised, destitute of sovereignty and of the rights of 
property, rose. Phoenix-like, from the ashes of revolution to the pinnacle of 
boundless empire. Three millions persecuted and proscribed people, stripped 
of the fruits of their labor, tortured into agony, and transported beyond seas 
to be tried and condemned by the minions of power for imaginarv 
offenses, have risen like a huge mountain of God's wrath, and, overwhelming 
the accursed agencies of despotism and the enemies of human liberty, trans- 
mitted the blessings of a free and durable government to a faithful and glo- 
rious posterity verging toward thirty million souls. The gallant ancestry 
of this great people were beheld in little squads, cribbed in and confined to 
narrow strips of wild land by dark, o'ershadowing forests, bristling with 
tomahawks and ringing with war-whoops on the one side, and by the stern 
and chilling waves of the ocean, covered with threatening navies, on the 
other; — but a change stranger than fiction has come over the face of things, 
and lo ! we now behold their children sovereign, happy, opulent, enlightened 
and illustrious, stretching far and wide, in busy multitudes, over the vast 
immeasurable surface of the continent, from Hudson's Bay to Panama, 
smiting down forests, opening rivers, building mighty cities, levelling moun- 
tains, elevating plains, and triumphing over subdued Nature and plunging 
with electrical velocity through the dark chasms of distance, banding the 



( -'is ) 

remotest localities together in the nearest proximity by bars of iron and by 
chords of steel. 

The American of the nincteentli century looks around him, and discovers, 
with noble pride, with boundinif hope, with lofty ambition, that the territory 
of the Republic is limitless and treasure -fraught — that the resources of the 
offsjyring of the colonies are splendid, inexhaustible ; and that the " bright 
stars and broad stripes," which waved at Yorktown over the fallen hosts of 
the liaughticst kingdom on earth, constitute an ever glorious symbol and 
assurance of universal dominion — the dominion of Liberty, of Christianity, and 
of Mind, — the appropriate instruments wherewith Despotism is battered 
down in subservience of Freedom, and conservatism in government perma- 
nently effectuated. 

The American is the ark of safety, the anointed civilizer, the only visible 
source of light and heat and repose to the dark and discordant and troubled 
World, which is heaving and groaning, and livid in convulsions all around 
him ! He is Liberty's chosen apostle : he is a master workman, and uni- 
versal space is his workshop, and universal perfectibility his hallowed aim. 
He has present and eternal reward for his exertions, and limitless expanse 
for his enterprise, his genius, his glory. He is more fertile in expedients, 
more steadfast in purpose, more indomitable of soul, more energetic, more 
bold and aspiring, than his European predecessors or their contemporaries. 
He is free, and all the fountains and outlets of learning and science, past, 
present and future, are his willing tributaries. He has deeply studied the 
progress of Europeans ; he has searched their resources, their schemes ; be 
beholds their achievements, their wealth and their power ! He early dis- 
covered the canker in the bud, the rottenness at the core of their system — 
the gradual collection and impending conflict of those warring elements 
which are preparing to rend and consume it. Like the disc of the sun, his 
own system is without blemish, lustrous and vitalizing! Thus advised, he 
burns with generous rivalry, — emulation is a fire in his blood, a fever in his 
brain, the magical aliment of his mounting spirit. His eye flashes and his 
breast heaves when he contemplates the stupendous superiority of his country 
in all those attributes which constitute a nation's glory and a people's hap- 
piness. Rainbows of promise and visions of grandeur crowd upon his en- 
raptured mind, when even European statistics involuntarily concede to his 
country, mountains of ore and mines of mineral wealth, thirty times greater 
than those of England, and fifteen times greater than those of the whole of 
Europe combined. The Republic is as far (perhaps farther) ahead of her 
rival nations in all other national and civil advantages It would be useless 
to enumerate them — they arc palpable, they are portrayed, demonstrated in 
the current literature and daily developments of the times ; they are steadily 
pouring tlielr dazzling streams of wealth into the depots of our commerce 
with each rising and setting of the Sun. 

Europe is hoary with age — America crude with infancy ; yet she towers 
amid her aged contemporaries like a pillar of gold, whose summit, crowned 
with diamonds, is lost in the ambient clouds. What must be the contrast 
when she reaches her meridian vigor V If the first Power of Europe has 
become great and powerful, notwithstanding tlie extraordinary moral, politi- 
cal and religious obstacles, as well as natural deficiencies, which have 
opposed her progress, to what an unimaginable liight of glory is the young 
America, free and pure, and with natural resources more than thirty-fold 
greater, destined to attain? Eaithful to that constitution by which she has 
risen so rapidly from bondage to sovereignty, from poverty to opulence, from 



(89) 

obscurity to fame, and from a weakness wliicli pigmies despised to a strength 
of which the world stands in awe, — her future must be more than her past, 
" one tide of glory — one unclouded blaze." 

I am not permitted, however convenient it would be, to dwell upon the 
brilliant details of that full prosperity by which we are surrounded at this 
era, in further illustration of the wisdom of our government. It would be 
needless, however. These are things which the blind may see, which the 
deaf may hear, which the most skeptical may unhesitatingly believe. The 
learned, accomplished and impartial Hallam has taught the student of history 
that to discover the benignity and efficacy of any form of government, he 
must search its effects upon national greatness, civil liberty, social order, 
popular energy, the diffusion of wealth, and the prevailing tone of moral 
sentiment. Doubtless a more certain, unerring and competent medium of 
inquiry could not have been suggested. The World may not object to such 
a test of political utility, and the American Patriot proudly and gratefully 
invites the scrutiny : briefly, what are some of the most obvious ejfects of 
our constitution V We u-erc a deplorable cluster of feeble, shattered, crazy 
colonies : we are the most free, happy and powerful Republic on the Globe ! 
We were without trade and commerce : the sails of our merchantmen whiten 
every sea, and the wares of our mechanics and the goods of our merchants 
are vended in every mart and sold in every City and Hamlet in the Universe ! 
We were without agriculture : we are in the constant habit of exporting 
millions of bushels of breadstuff's annually, and of opening our granaries, 
wherein are garnered, with each revolution of the seasons, upvv^arcls of nine 
hundred and seventy-one millions bushels of esculent grain, and of distribu- 
ting this, our abundance, with lordly bounty, "without money and without 
price," to the famishing subjects of forms of government in antagonism with 
that of our own country, and beneath whose blighting influence vegetation 
withers and the human form hungers and dies. We iverc without manu- 
factures : we are in the exercise of a mechanical genius and energy possess- 
ing the undisputed glory of having originated and introduced a stupendous 
power into machinery by which forms and substances, and time and space, 
are made (he playthings of man's caprice. We were without Cities : they 
are as numerous as the leaves of the forest. We were without Colleges — 
our people were uneducated : we are provided with Colleges in every pre- 
cinct, and educated men in every citizen. We iverc without n national 
literature : we have reason to be proud of the genius of our ] > uts, the 
classic elegance of our Historians, the deep erudition of our Scholars ; and 
the eloquence of our Statesmen rivals the boasted models of antiquity. 
We v)ere without an independent Press, that glorious inspiration, that bane 
of despotism and ignorance : we are daily instructed by the most patriotic, 
intrepid, learned and eloquent Journals in the World. We ivcrc without 
religious liberty : we are the blessed recipients of the revelation of that holy 
and divine Personage who sealed his mission to a ruined world upon Mount 
Calvary : now every man may freely worship his Maker according to the 
impulse of his heart and the dictate. of his judgment, be they whatsoever; 
and the piety of our Churchmen penetrates, with "mildest ray serene," the 
darkest recesses of Paganism. We xoere without a Judiciary : the learning 
and wisdom of more than twenty centuries illuminate and adorn our Bencli, 
and incorruptible integrity holds the scales of Justice guided by the genius 
of Liberty. We were without national credit: foreign capitalists are eager 
to purchase American securities and make American investments, admitting 
that they are, beyond all competition, more safe and more jirofitable than 



( 40 ) 

European stocks. American industry toas without incentive — without re- 
ward : wc arc annually in the receipt of more than two thousand millions 
of money for the product of our labor. Why should I go on enumerating 
details so self-evident, so inexhaustible? 

Such are some of the brilliant, triumphant effects of the constitution. Is 
not its utility — is not the glory and happiness of the country under its 
illustrious auspices, signally demonstrated by daily observation 'I How wc 
should prize, liuw we should venerate, how we should adore and uphold that 
main-spring of our national felicity and greatness 1 Thus judged by its 
effects, we must regard it as consummately sublime — as the perfection of 
utility. AVith it how rapid has been the flight of the Republic — not from 
*' splendor to disgrace," but from insignificancy to supremacy. How has it 
accomplished these immeasurable realities 1 — by a sound, free, firm, equitable 
policy ; by the discovery and enforcement of the true and certain lines of 
justice and equality among all men, diversified as they are and must ever 
be ; and by the magnanimity, the compromise, the union of many in one for 
the common good of all. The particulars of the developing process are 
many and intricate ; but the prominent features, the key-stones of the arch, 
are few and obvious. In a word, our progenitors were trodden under foot : 
they rose and smote the oppressors, and, triumphing, bequeathed to mankind 
a generous government, identical with the wants and dignity of men. Its 
peaceful sway presently brought order and symmetry out of disorder and 
deformity — glory, prosperity and dominion out of servitude and wretchedness. 

It may not be unbecoming in mo to say, in conclusion, that various causes 
may conspire to shake this proud fabric. Vexed political questions may 
rush into antagonism. Party zeal may become querulous and inflammatory. 
The rage of conquest and the thirst of warlike achievement may pervert 
and allure. Social interests may seem to be inimical and paramount. An 
unfraternal spirit of onci'oachment and an anti-republican tone of dictation 
may, and probably will, occasionally interrupt the order and harmony of the 
Union. IJut the vital and hallowed motire of the revolution — the sacred 
memory of the revolutionary patriots, the common ancestors, whom all 
acknowledge and revere — mutual dependence — the respect and applause of 
mankind — the a[)probation of the Supreme Iluler of the world — the tics of 
kindred and the curamunion of love — all combined with the niagnihcent 
destiny of the llepublic, if maintained united and inviolate, as it may be fore- 
seen, looming up, in wordless splendor, in the mazy prospective, — these con- 
siderations, it does seem to me, do now, and ought to, and will eviM", constitute 
gordian knots of inseparability, permanency and fidelity, which will ever draw 
together the restive members, and bind them proudly and imperishably, 
"many in one," in stern defiance of error and disorganization. 

Poised, as we may be considered at this moment, upon a neck of time 
connecting the two moities of the current century with the story of our 
country in our minds, and with our vision roaming through the scenic vista 
of the unforgottcn past and o'er the gorgeous panoply of the unclouded 
future, animated and exalted alike by tlie retrospect and by the anticipation, 
we involuntarily exclaim — Our past career is crowiled with heroic and 
inspiring remembrances, our future resplendent with attainments the most 
unequalled! and that the llepublic is, therefore, rapidly graduating to 
the effectuation of a national power, grandeur and happiness altogether 
without a parallel in the wide world's ami)le history ! 

"The Star Siiaiitrli'd J>;iiiiK>r, () loiifi niay it wavR 
O'er llio laiul of tlic free and the lioiric of the brave.'' 



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